Tongues of Men and Angels
by Fyrefly
Summary: She finds him broken in the desert-but through the Grace of God, all things are made new. Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters.
1. Prologue: Holy Blood

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **In the desert, she find him broken. Through the grace of God…all things are made new. A series of drabbles. Gabriel/OC.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Prologue: Holy Blood**

_When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, "Enough! Withdraw your hand." _

**2 Samuel 24:16**

He was panting. The universe was a wreathe of pain—not only physical, but spiritual.

He had been abandoned.

He swallowed down the taste of it, bright and bitter: buried it beneath sinew and isolation. The wound in his side bled freely as he stumbled into a landing. He didn't know where to go. There was only one home—had only _ever_ been one home—and with the gates now closed to him, he didn't know where else to go.

Cut off from his Father's love, he was bereft.

The sun rose in the blink of an eye, it seemed; it set again just as quickly. He couldn't keep track of the days spent staggering through the desert. The tips of his wings dragged in the grit until, in the dry chill of night, he crumbled to his knees, his face plowing through the cold grains of glass.

Holy blood spilled out across the sand, like ink in the moonlight.

**Word Count: 160**

**Completed: April 8, 2011**


	2. I: Miracle

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **In the desert, she find him broken. Through the grace of God…all things are made new. A series of drabbles. Gabriel/OC.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter I: Miracle**

…_I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory._

**Isaiah 6: 1-3**

This is how Bethany found him:

She thought he was carrion at first, from a distance—huge slabs of feathered meat left to rot in the desert sun. It was only (she thought) a miracle that the coyotes hadn't yet torn it apart.

But as they drew closer—Bethany and Joy and their father's '92 Ford F150, two sisters and a rusted-out truck against a decimated world—she suddenly realized the scope of the wings, the sheer size of them, and even as she struggled to think of what animal they could possibly belong to, the feathers stirred.

And she saw an arm.

For all the strange things she has seen in the last few weeks, she still didn't understand—not at first. She threw the groaning Ford into park, jolting Joy out of a dead sleep, and stumbled out of the pick-up.

"Hey!" she breathed, reaching for the sprawled arm and falling to her knees in the gritty sand. "Are you—" she moved to shove aside the heavy wing, throw the animal from him. Instead, the feathers bit deeply into her palms, slicing them lengthwise, and she gasped and pressed them to her chest to staunch the sudden flow of blood.

"Bethany?"

She whirled. "Joy!" she said sharply. "Get back in Baby!"

"But what—"

"I don't _know!"_ she snapped. "Go!"

Joy's eyes widened, almost as startled by her sister's tone as she was by the blood on Bethany's shirt. She turned quickly and scurried back to the truck, peering through the window with anxious eyes.

"Okay," Bethany whispered to herself, staring down at the winged man (_angel, _her mind supplied nervously) as she struggled to find a place to touch him without risking the sudden loss of fingers if he startled.

"…Sir?" she said hesitantly. She could almost feel the whiteness of her own face, scared and stiff and pale."Sir, are you…" _Sir? _she repeated, incredulous. _Is that the best you can do? _"I'm going to roll you on your side, okay?" And she placed one hand tentatively on his shoulder. He didn't stir, and she tried to shift him, but he couldn't be moved. She hesitated, reluctant to get close to those razored wings, before sucking in a short determined breath and planting her shoulder squarely against his, using her body as leverage.

She was panting by the time she'd gotten him on his side, but when she pulled back and saw his face, she stopped breathing entirely.

_Oh God, _her heart stammered. _Oh God. _

He was so lovely, she thought. He was all kinds of beautiful. The planes of his face were smooth and slanting, and the skin around her eyes tightened with the onslaught of tears.

"Oh," she said. "Oh."

She breathed again, suddenly, the air catching on a sob in her throat. "Okay," she said again, bracing herself, and then repeated the word. It was a comfort: the sound of her own voice, a reminder of reality.

Then his eyes shot open and she fell back on her tailbone, caught by the blind ferocity in his gaze, the way the light threw broken sapphires and fire-opals into his stare. In his eyes she saw lightning, and exploding suns, mountaintops and cold places where stars were born, and bright, bittersweet, violent things that she couldn't name.

**Word Count: 552**

**Completed: April 8, 2011**


	3. II: Speaking in Tongues

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **In the desert, she find him broken. Through the grace of God…all things are made new. A series of drabbles. Gabriel/OC.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter I: Miracle**

**Chapter II: Speaking in Tongues**

_If I speak in the tongues__ of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing._

**1 Corinthians 13: 1-3**

"Michael," the angel spat. "I dreamed of killing—"

His last word was one she couldn't understand, something both guttural and sweet, a dialect that seemed ancient and strangely familiar. He was delirious, she realized abruptly, those burning eyes seeing into her and through her, as though she weren't there at all.

"Who _are _you?" she asked softly.

His gaze focused on her and she blinked back tears, one bloody palm coming up to calm her roiling belly. She didn't think she had ever been so full of fear—and beauty.

"Cain," he growled, and she shuddered, breaking out in gooseflesh.

"That is _not _your name," she whispered without thinking, and she knew in her bones that her words were true. She hesitated. "Who did you dream of killing?" she asked, and her tone was hushed and frightened.

"Everyone," he said, his eyes glazing over, then clearing again. _"You," _he snarled.

Her stomach, already sick with terror, suddenly plummeted. She reached forward with one shaking, wounded palm and laid it gently against his cheek. "Okay," she said again as his blazing eyes fluttered closed. "Okay."

**Word Count: 185**

**Completed: April 8, 2011**


	4. III: Bread Alone

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **In the desert, she find him broken. Through the grace of God…all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Gabriel/OC.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter III: Bread Alone**

_Yet He gave a command to the skies above  
>and opened the doors of the heavens;<br>He rained down manna for the people to eat,  
>He gave them the grain of heaven.<br>Human beings ate the bread of angels;  
>He sent them all the food they could eat. <em>

**Psalm 78: 23-25**

They found a broken, abandoned home a few miles away, a months-old breakfast still set prettily on the table. It had been surprisingly easy to get the half-conscious angel into the bed of the truck, but once he'd fallen back into unconsciousness it had been hopeless to get him out. She'd always supposed that angels would be made of light and air, or failing that, at least be hollow-boned like birds in order to fly. But no: between armor and muscle, and wings which she suspected were bulletproof as well as razor-tipped, lifting him proved to be impossible. She'd tried to wriggle underneath one of his heavy arms and nearly crushed herself in the process, her lungs constricting painfully before she realized that even if she managed to half-lift and half-push him to the edge of the tailgate, she wouldn't get him shy of it without tossing him painfully to the ground and possibly killing herself in the process. Instead—since she wouldn't let Joy help, though the teenager had sat and watched anxiously from the sidelines—she focused on making him as comfortable as possible in the bed of the truck, padding the space around him with blankets Joy had found in the house.

"What do angels eat?" the younger girl asked now, nervousness in her throat. It hurt Bethany's heart. Once, Joy had been sassy and witty, full of sharp comebacks and defiance. Now, every movement spoke of her fear. "I mean, I suppose I should know but—I can make something," the teenager interrupted herself, stumbling through the words. "There are frozen waffles in the house—"

_What do angels eat? _The thought was half-hysterical, terrifying in its reality. It was a question Bethany never thought that she would have to answer—and now that she did, the logistics of the question were staggering. What did one feed a messenger of the Lord in order to keep him from molting bladed feathers onto the floor? How did you nourish a creature like him?

"Make something for yourself, kiddo," she answered only, aching with weariness as she took the sutures and gauze from her sister. It was the last of their medical supplies. "And Joy, can you look to see if they have a first aid kit anywhere?"

"Yeah," the younger girl said, nodding a little frantically. She hesitated. "But—Beth? Can I…can we share a room tonight? I don't like sleeping alone in some girl's bed. Especially when I know she's probably…"

_Dead. _They didn't say it, but the word hung between them like a noose. Bethany's heart twisted. The things poor Joy had seen—

"I might have to stay out here, kid," she said apologetically, smoothing her fingers gently over her sister's forehead. "It's up to you, if you want to sleep in the cab of the truck. You can keep me company."

**Word Count: 477**

**Date Completed: April 10, 2011**


	5. IV: Vigil

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **In the desert, she find him broken. Through the grace of God…all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Gabriel/OC.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter IV: Vigil**

_Be vigilant; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love._

**1 Corinthians 16: 13-14**

She peeled back his armor, sticky with blood, wincing as she did. His wound looked weeks old, the edges curling, though it smelled remarkably clean. She supposed that angelflesh could not be so easily corrupted.

She mended him as well as she could, though she didn't have much experience with wounds like his. Several times, his eyes opened and he muttered fierce things in his alien tongue, and everything about his became fiery and condemning. But now she didn't seem to notice—or at least, she wasn't burnt through quite so cleanly by his furious beauty. She supposed in its own way it was tragic, that she could so easily as a human be desensitized to even his blinding glory. Instead, she focused intently: on his damaged ribs, his sliced abdomen, the grazes on his face, the ache she thought she heard deep in his voice, beneath the foreign words and the ferocity.

She kept watch all night, crouching in the corner of the bed of the truck, or perching on the rusting wheel-well. She couldn't in good conscience leave him, especially not when he had shown a habit of lunging half-awake in his delirium, nearly tearing open his wound a number of times.

And his dreams. She'd thought her own were bad—of Armageddon, of savage-eyed neighbors and friends, of torture and blood in the streets, of her parents, of the look in her sister's eyes—but his, the anger in him, and the devastation…sometimes in the night, when his nightmares shook the Ford and Joy stared through the back window of the cab in fear, sometimes Bethany just clung to him to try to keep him still, to try to soak up some of his pain. Though his innermost feathers were pillow-soft, a few times the sharp edges of his wings scored the skin of her back in shallow cuts, ribboning her shirt and jacket. She tried to anchor him to the earth, tried to hold all his broken parts inside. Twice she cried, silently and stoically, her tears slicking the side of his throat where the strange collar bit into his skin. She wasn't typically the crying sort, but something in him pulled on her heart. She could look at the lines of his face and see how they'd been carved for tragedy.

Not from it, but _for _it. As though he'd been made to experience pain.

Now, slumped against the wheel-well, she found her heart kept lurching in her chest as she watched him. She patted her sternum with one open, bandaged palm, trying to soothe the ache there. She wished she had some words to offer him, as she had once offered her sister: shared memories and stories, love-words to help him survive the night.

"I feel you," she whispered to him instead, and she prayed he'd hold onto her voice. The stars prickled in the cold sky overhead. "I'm with you."

**Word Count: 487**

**Date Completed: April 10, 2011**


	6. V: Divine Law

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **In the desert, she find him broken. Through the grace of God…all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Gabriel/OC.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter V: Divine Law**

_...Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law._

**Romans 13:10**

When Gabriel awoke, it was to an aqua and lavender dawn. His eyes snapped open, suddenly alert and aware; he took in his surroundings quickly, one hand smoothing over the bandage-covered sutures at his side. The work was sloppily executed, but earnest, and the rough mending had been enough to facilitate his angelic healing.

He sat swiftly, easily subduing an instinctive wince at the pain. His eyes narrowed on the frail shape of a human girl, folded and tucked into a corner beside him. He took in the makeshift nest of blankets, which smelled of human cleaning chemicals and mothballs. He was in the bed of a rusting vehicle, and he could sense another girl dozing on the backseat inside _a girl in the backseat, her arms latched around his throat as he burrowed between human bodies like a monster—_

He rose abruptly, dashing the memory aside. The vehicle shuddered with his displaced mass, jarring the girl in the corner. She jolted awake, eyes wide and bruised-looking when they latched on him. They were the color of pennies, he noted detachedly, and her soft human features were streaked on the right side by a deep, new-looking scar. It cut from her scalp, bisecting one eyebrow and reappearing on her cheekbone to slice diagonally down to her jaw. The wound was ugly and raw, symbolic of her weakness and sin, and he dismissed her readily, unfolding his wings and testing them instead. Reluctantly, he drew them back in when he felt them strain. He was still weak, though he supposed a few shabby human sutures couldn't be expected to restore his strength like heavenly healing.

_If only the gates hadn't been closed—_

The memory sliced through his belly, sharper than Michael's sword.

"Hi."

He turned his gaze toward the honey-eyed woman. Her voice was sweet too, and golden. _Fraudulent, _he thought, and he gazed down at her with disdain. "Child," he acknowledged coldly, then hesitated. "You have shown good heart," he added grudgingly, "in offering aid to an angel of God." _You shall be rewarded in heaven, _he almost said, but was no longer certain of his own place in his Father's favor.

"Oh," she said, and sounded surprised. "All right. Uhm. Thanks."

He gazed around, ignoring her for the moment. They were outside an opulent—if abandoned—human dwelling. He imagined its original inhabitants had been exterminated in the recent apocalypse, and that his current hostesses might be preparing to seek asylum there—yet they had not entered; at least, they had not slept inside. He turned to the small woman at his feet—small even by human standards—and his lip curled in contempt despite his halfhearted attempt to quell it.

"You did not enter the domicile," he said, wondering if he should somehow aid her and her kin in return for their own threadbare hospitality. Was that now how mankind worked? An eye for an eye, a gift for a gift?

But she looked surprised, and said, "I couldn't leave you," as though such a thing were obvious. Then: "Where will you go?" she asked, sounding childlike in her curiosity, expecting nothing from him.

He stared at her inscrutably, then looked out at the landscape. The lawn was a burnt span of drying grass, an acre of parched earth which had once been a manufactured oasis in the desert. Now the garden was dead, and even in the mild heat of dawn, the leaves on the trees were curling and dropping into the in-ground pool, which smelled rank. He tilted his head and studied the sludge-dark water before deciding that something had died in it during the battle—probably something human.

He sighed, and turned back to the woman in the bed of the truck. Another set of eyes, darker and younger and far more frightened, now peered through the back window at him.

He sighed again. "Where, indeed."

**Word Count: 651**

**Completed: April 13, 2011**


	7. VI: Wounds

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter VI: Wounds**

…_He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted…_

**Isaiah 61:1**

"How quickly you heal," she murmured, carefully peeling back the bandage. Only a few days since she had found him in the desert, and his wound was now knit nearly as cleanly as hers. Soon it would disappear entirely.

He had intended to depart immediately, though he knew not where he would go—but she had insisted on tending to his wound before he left, and had placed herself before him with soft hands on his chest. The only way around her would have been to forcibly remove her, and at this moment in time, he was hesitant to do anything that would cause him to lose more of his Father's love. Instead, he stared stonily into the distance, perched ludicrously on a lawnchair. When the gauze pulled briefly at a patch of unhealed flesh, he heard her suck a breath in between clenched teeth and was surprised to recognize the sound as sympathetic. He wondered if her own new scar still pained her.

"We are made superior to humans," he answered shortly, though the truth was that humans—who had come later, like a plague—had been, by their very chronological advent, made _in_ferior.

He had intended to leave as soon as she was satisfied, but with nowhere to go and her young sister's soulful dark eyes gazing up at him, he had decided—against his better judgment—to stay. It was repentance in its own right: a form of martyrdom, to stay here in the company of humans. Barred from heaven, he would rather find himself out among the cold wonders of space than in this arid, manufactured wasteland, with its reeking pool and scorched lawn.

She looked at him, and he couldn't decipher her expression. "I suppose that's so," she said carefully, and he could feel the caution in her tone. _Where was that when you dragged me from the desert, little one? _he thought sardonically. "It's clear that you heal quickly, and it never leaves a mark, does it?" she asked, her fingers brushing gently against the places where the scar had already pinkened and browned. He frowned at her touch, so oddly intimate that it repulsed him.

The earth was a love letter, with its golden sands and blue mountains, its elephants and caterpillars. And humans had spat upon it. But perhaps, in this self-imposed penance, he could dredge up some modicrum of compassion for them.

_Anything, _he thought emphatically—though he recognized the futility of the thought even as it occurred—_Anything to please Father._

"Humans are more fragile," she acknowledged, casting a small and inappropriately tender smile at him. He recoiled. "We wound easily, don't we?"

Where would he go? He had no home. He was…adrift.

"Yes," he said slowly, warily.

"And we carry those wounds with us until the day we die." She smiled again, and he was suddenly struck by how haunted she looked.

That was when he decided to stay. He would protect these human children, whether he wanted to or not, and he would look out for them. And hopefully—prayerfully—Father would see his behavior for what it was: an act of submission, or penance. He watched as she rebandaged him, though it was unnecessary, and he weighed his words carefully.

"I will remain at your side for a time," he informed her at last, his voice and eyes stony. "To observe. And protect you. And provide for you."

She opened her mouth, doubtless a witty retort on her lips, then closed it instead. "Well, thank you," she said cautiously. "Are you sure?"

He nodded once, firmly, and stood, stretching slightly and clenching his stomach muscles to test his healing wound.

"Also," he advised thoughtfully after a moment, "Do not swim in the pool."

**Word Count: 626**

**Completed: April 15, 2011**


	8. VII: Fear Not

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter VII: Fear Not**

…_The angel said…"Do not be afraid..."_

**Genesis 21: 17**

**Matthew 1: 20**

**Luke 1: 13**

**Luke 1: 30**

**Luke 2: 10**

It was good to know that he did not _need _nourishment—not as these fragile humans did. Manna was in short supply here in the wastelands, he imagined.

Still, when the younger of the two girls brought him a plate full of peanut-butter and crackers and a glass full of chilled apple juice, he wished he had bothered to remember their names—so that he might thank her properly. This one was not as unsettling as her older sister: where the woman had shining eyes and a decimated face and relentlessly touching hands, this child was skittish with her gaze and her proximity. Darker-eyed, lighter-haired, she hunched her shoulders when she approached him—but it didn't stop her from holding out the offering and casting him a quick, hopeful smile.

Something about her bearing reached through the fierce stoicism he'd wrapped himself in.

"You have brought me sustenance," he said slowly, and she jumped at the low thunder of his voice.

"We didn't know—what angels eat," she offered apologetically. The glass was sweating in her hand. "But it's been days since you got here, and we thought maybe there was something we had that you would want—"

He sighed, eying the salty wafers. "Not that," he said, almost regretfully. He supposed it would have been an act of good will if he could have accepted the food, consumed it. Broken bread with them, so to speak.

"Oh." She looked mournful for a moment, and lost, and then she turned back to the house. In spite of himself, he didn't want her to leave. Cut off from his Father's presence, the isolation was excruciating. Perspiration sheened his brow at the effort of existing without it.

"You may stay," he said without thinking, and she dropped the plate in her sudden alarm. He watched impassively as it struck the ground and shattered against the paving stones. When she looked back at him, half-panicked, his eyes narrowed despite his best efforts to maintain neutrality.

"I am not here to harm you, child. Not now."

"No?" she breathed. He could taste her terror. It was different from the holy awe and trembling that had once shaken humans to their core at the sight of an angel—there was no reverence here. Only a kind of strange fatalism. His hands clenched briefly.

"No." The word was short and clipped. "I am here to watch over you."

"I didn't think angels did that kind of thing anymore," she whispered. "Not unless—" She broke off; he inclined his head and watched her, waiting, until she felt compelled to continue. "Not unless it was to point out your every sin," she said, and the words were a haunted sigh.

His held back his own sigh. _Teenagers._ If he were to please his Father—if he were to be able to properly understand this little family, and humans as a whole through them—doubtless he would have to put her at ease. "We are no longer at war," he informed her resignedly, just in case she somehow hadn't noticed.

"Don't sound so excited," she said sharply, and his eyebrows twitched upward just a fraction. There was spirit in her yet, he supposed—misguided and irreverent though it might be. He wondered if she inherited it from her sister, whose prying and gentle hands seemed to constantly invade his person.

"We are no longer at war," he repeated, "and whatever you encountered during those dark days is gone now."

"You would think," she said only.

"I will not harm you."

She looked up at him cautiously from beneath uncut bangs. "So you said," she responded slowly.

He frowned. "What ails you, child?" he asked, but he was slowly coming to his own conclusions. Her reactions to him might be initially attributed to his role in the Armageddon—or whatever she assumed his role to be—but there was something else to it, an added layer that he had encountered before, though never directed at himself. The way she lifted her shoulders protectively; how she hid her face—"I am an archangel of the Lord," he said sharply. "I am not a human man, with base lusts for power and flesh."

She glowered up at him then, despite her fear. "I am aware of that."

He stood very still, struggling to voice the obvious truth in a way that was not vile: _I will not violate you. _At last he managed to say, "My Father is very dear to me." The words closed up his throat for a moment before he could continue. "I would not do anything to wound Him." He poured every part of himself into those words, hoping that the child would sense his authenticity—hoping, too, that Father heard him and recognized his sorrow and repentance.

The girl shivered. "I told my sister I wanted to come out here to give you this," she said. "She was worried, but I told her I—I _needed _to, and she understood." She raised her eyes to his slowly, and when she spoke again her voice was cold in spite of its quaver. "Do you know what I think she would say if she heard you talk like that?"

He was still, silent, waiting. If the child wanted to condemn him—well, he might think it arrogant, but he would swallow it in the name of his Father.

"She would say that if that's your only motivation to keep from hurting me, then we're going to have some very serious problems."

**Word Count: 924**

**Completed: April 15, 2011**

**My installments are becoming increasingly less drabble-like…uh oh. **

**In the meantime, the goal of this chapter was to illustrate more clearly Gabriel's mindset and motivation, and how that just isn't going to cut it—not for the sisters, and not for his Dad. Hopefully I accomplished that with subtlety and grace. We'll see. **


	9. VIII: Casualty

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter VIII: Casualty**

_And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter._

**Judges 11:34**

"What happened to the child?" he asked sharply. "She has been hurt." He couldn't remember the scarred sister's name, and suddenly—for the second time—he wished he'd paid attention to the scarred woman's introductions. Remembering the child's haunted face, the way she'd jumped and a certain particularity of her flinch, his expression turned thunderous. "Was she raped?" The word he couldn't bring himself to use before the child had come easily in front of her sister, and his voice was unrelenting, unforgiving.

The penny-eyed woman looked up slowly. Her face was more guarded than he had seen it in their time together. "What makes you ask?" she said slowly.

He inclined his head, eyes dark with lightning and fire. "I have seen similar reactions among the survivors of these human atrocities." He paused. "There is…something about the eyes," he conceded at last, and he sounded as close to helpless as he'd ever heard himself.

"Well," she answered at last, and her voice was surprisingly shuttered and cold, unlike the tone he had grown to expect from her. "That is an interesting way to put it. Yes, I suppose you could say that. Something definitely crawled up inside her where it didn't belong."

**Word Count: 203**

**Completed: April 15, 2011**

**Phew. Back to drabble-length again.**

**To everyone who has reviewed: thanks a ton! Especially to those of you who have taken the time to leave a comment that is specific and personal—they're especially meaningful, and I do appreciate it when you feed the storymonsters. :)**


	10. IX: Exile

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Gabriel/OC.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter IX: Exile**

_Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth…"_

**Genesis 4: 13-14**

He had managed to discern their names, though he kept himself apart from them. They did not stay in any place long, but while they drove he took to the skies and kept an eye on them from above. At night, he stood on the roof of whatever abandoned home they found for refuge, and he gazed in the direction of heaven. His chest felt hollowed out, as empty as the farthest reaches of the universe. He could feel himself beginning to cave in: a body full of sucking wounds.

"Father," he whispered in the tongue of angels, "please—do not rebuke me in your anger or wound me in your wrath. Have mercy on me, Father; I am faint—heal me, for my very _bones_ are agony. My soul is steeped in anguish." He drew in a shuddering breath and felt the tears welling behind his eyes. The stars in the sky were cold. His large body shook with the barrenness of his solitude. "Turn and deliver me, Father—I _beg _you—save me because of your unfailing love. All night long I flood this desert with weeping and tears. I am laid low—I am _weak_ with sorrow, Father. How long until I may come home? How long?"

There was no answer: only silence. He bowed his head, allowing his pain to wash over him.

And in the silence, he sensed her presence.

"That was beautiful," Bethany said softly, stepping forward. She must have climbed from the window of the second story, which jutted from the rooftop. "What—what was it?"

"It was _private_," he said shortly, switching back to this fumbling human language. "It was—a supplication. For my Father."

Her feet crunched the gravelly shingles as she padded toward him. "Are you—" She hesitated. "Are you all right, Gabriel?"

He was very still and very quietly, for just a moment. Then, almost against his will, he answered her. "I love my father," Gabriel said slowly. "Ever since the moment I was created, I have longed only to please him."

She stood silently at his back. Slowly, hesitantly, she placed one palm between his wings.

"Have you succeeded?" she asked.

He stiffened. He had no need to bare his soul to a foolish human, whose own spirit was tarnished by repeated sin and whose years were to him as a blink of the eye.

But in spite of himself, a wave of yearning rose in him. In heaven, his inner troubles were known intimately by the Lord. He had been comforted, sated, saturated in love and truth, in holy fire and sacred light. Here, on earth, everything was dull and listless, a work of love rendered gray by atrocity and sin. The comfort he would have found in his Father and his brothers—it was all stripped away.

He was naked. Bereft.

And though the puny measure of comfort offered by this girl could not assuage the ache inside him, which seemed to split through his very core, he still craved it. In the absence of his Father, even this would be a relief—and the thought disgusted him.

"He bade me destroy mankind," Gabriel said, watching her over his shoulder and waiting for her flinch. "I was chosen to lead the armies of God, deep in the heart of this last December."

She waited patiently, her hand never moving. He drew a labored breath, trying to calm himself, and his back rose and fell quickly beneath her open palm. He wondered if she had somehow already known.

"Did you go back?" she asked at last, once his breathing had calmed. Now her hand dropped; she came to stand at his side and peer over the edge of the roof.

His face felt heavy, carved from marble and granite. He looked into the distance. "The Gates were closed," he said shortly, though it did not do justice to the realization itself. He could not—would not—degrade himself to tell her how he had flown for days, even weeks, growing weaker and weaker as he searched for the outcroppings of singing stones, the pillars of the firmament. How he had believed, unequivocally, that Father would lead him home.

When he'd finally realized that he was lost, cast from his Father's presence, the pain had cut through him surer than any Sword of Truth. Blinded for a moment, wounded beyond the telling and sick with grief, he'd crumbled to earth like an injured bird. The wasteland-desert had swallowed him, and for that he'd been grateful. With one hand in his wound, he'd travelled recklessly, the wandering of an abandoned child. He'd prayed to his Father, murmuring seraphic words and hosannas; he'd cursed himself for his own failure to be a worthy son. He'd dreamed of pools of holy water, and in them his reflection was that of Cain. And every new thought brought with it a wave of emptiness, of hunger, of pain.

And finally, he had given up in the sand, just as—

"Father has given up on me," Gabriel said quietly.

"Oh," she said softly. "Well, that's reassuring, isn't it?"

His head snapped around and down to stare at her, his eyes burning blue with questions and anger. She didn't cringe at his glare, though—she only looked a little sad, and a little hopeful.

"I mean," she reasoned gently, "He gave up on us, too, didn't he? And now…here we are. He loved us too much to throw us away."

**Word Count: 916**

**Completed: April 17, 2011**

**Gabriel's prayer is an adaptation of Psalm 6.**


	11. X: A Moment of Joy

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter X: A Moment of Joy**

_...Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there be buried…"_

**Ruth 1:16-17**

"Will you go to her, please?" the scarred sister asked. Gabriel wondered how she bore her wound: like everything else on this planet, it seemed to serve only as evidence of the human ruination of God's precious gifts. Underneath the ugly—and clearly manmade—scar, she had been lovely once.

He stared at her silently as she bent into the oven. Heat wafted out as she slid the tray in.

"She'll be so excited," Bethany said, and laughed softly. "Just tell her."

_Why? _he thought. He was uncertain if the question was for Bethany—_why are you asking me to do this?—_or for his Father—_why are You asking me to do this?_

Soundlessly he turned on his heel and left the house.

He found her on the edge of the road. She was staring at nothing, at the uniform houses across the street, with parched lawns and abandoned porches. He was finding that Joy did this often: moved to some place where the view was narrow and ugly, and stared into a distance that wasn't there, her eyes vague and empty. The sun streamed down on her now, nothing like the sweet burning holy light of God, but something polluted and glaring. Sweat sheened her brow. She didn't blink.

He stood at her side, an obvious presence, but for the moment he chose silence over speech. There was something about her stillness, how deeply entrenched she was within herself, that made him reluctant to disturb her. Minutes passed.

Then she moved.

"Beth sent you, didn't she?"

He inclined his head and grew tense, waiting for her words. It was vaguely surprising—how her flinching had somehow managed to pierce his carefully-cultivated austerity, how it managed to make him feel low. He, who had once been one of the most elevated of archangels—

And how the other one, named for the town where Lazarus was given second life, managed to make him feel whole.

If ever an angel could be driven mad, he imagined these sisters would do it.

She chuckled softly, gently: almost as though she'd somehow divined his thought. It was a sound he associated more with the older, scarred girl—calm, brimming with warmth and sadness and affection—but he was undeniably, if reluctantly, glad to hear it from her. "That's Beth," she murmured. "She thinks if there's anything wounded or ugly, that it's worth holding on to. Fighting for." A pause. "Loving."

Her words stung, but he wasn't sure why. He realized then that he didn't know if Joy was referring to herself—or to him.

"You know she sent you out here for a _reason_, instead of coming herself, right?" she chuckled, but the gentleness had been replaced by bleakness and despair and dryness. _This _was the tone he was used to hearing from the younger sister. "_Everything _she does is—smart. Calculated." She sighed, the long-suffering little sister in torment, and for a moment she sounded real and alive. "I'm sure she thinks we can be something for each other. Best buddies or something ridiculous like that. The sucky thing is that she usually ends up being right."

He wasn't sure how to respond, so instead he said solemnly, "She only bid me tell you that she found frozen pizza. DiGiorno. With stuffed crust."

Her head whipped around to look up at him—_she is very small, _he thought—and then she _did _laugh, surprised out of her desolation by the incongruity of his words.

"Are all our interactions going to be about food, Gabe?" she said, a smile still on her lips. He was startled by the familiarity, but not altogether displeased. It was certainly preferable to her terror, though he still sensed fear lingering around her edges.

He inclined his head once more. "If you wish it," he acknowledged, and the younger sister sighed.

"Thank you," she said reluctantly. "For staying with me, I mean. For being patient. I know it took a while."

He frowned. "I have much time to spare, child."

"Will you—" she broke off. "Will you do it again? I sometimes—I need to be alone. But I don't like being _alone." _

He understood instinctively: solitude without abandonment. It was one of the things he'd so prized in heaven, one of the things he craved so deeply now. And just as easily, and without sparing it a second thought, he found himself giving his promise. "Yes," he said readily, and it surprised him.

"Come on," the sister called Joy beckoned, starting toward the house. "Just because you don't eat doesn't mean you shouldn't join us for family dinner."

He stared after her, something unnamed and unknowable tightening inside him. He thought at first it was anger, or the loneliness he bore for his Father and brothers—but no, that wasn't right. "Family dinner?" he repeated, and the question meant something deeper than he wanted to acknowledge, deeper than he could bear.

"Of course," Joy said, with a tense and still-nervous—but very genuine—little smile. "I guess Bethany's got it in her head to adopt you as my big brother."

_Brother, _he thought, and it was followed quickly by the memory of his own mournful condemnation: _You wanted to live like one of them—_

"Come on," she summoned him again, and now she held out one hand to him, tentatively. "All of us—we're alone out here. We're family now."

**Word Count: 904**

**Completed: April 18, 2011**


	12. Interlude I: The Fall

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Interlude: The Fall**  
><em>I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.<em>  
><strong>Genesis 3: 10<strong>

She woke in the night, and she was unsure why—perhaps Gabriel had landed with a thud on the roof, though she couldn't imagine it. He was so silent, all the time.

Her scar ached and itched, and she slid out of the bed, careful not to wake Joy, and moved down the dark-shadowed hall to the bathroom. She soothed her face with cool water, her fingers creeping lingeringly over the rivet in her forehead, deep and furrowed. The skin rippled around the wound, ragged and tattered. She followed the scar through her eyebrow, sending up a prayer of thanks that it had missed her eye, that some instinctive twitching of her head had kept the heavy glass blade from burrowing into the socket.

Instead the wound began anew on the crest of her cheekbone, sluicing through the soft, plump skin there, pulling through the flesh of a pink mouth that had once been her favorite feature, back when she had time for things like cosmetics and dates.

_Ah, vanity. _She kind of missed it.

Still, in the silence, in the darkness, out of sight of Joy and their heavenly companion, she sank to her knees and pressed her forehead to the cold porcelain rim of the sink, closing her eyes and allowing the weariness to seep in. Had she done the loving thing, or the selfish thing? And which time? Doubts plagued her; regret assailed her. She drew in a shaking breath. She was glad that Gabriel and Joy were becoming—friends to each other. Family to each other. She thought they needed that, both of them.

Gabriel needed to see something beautiful here, on this planet, in this barren desert—and Bethany thought there was no-one better to illustrate that than her little sister, who stole her breath daily.

And Joy needed someone besides Bethany. More than Bethany. The older girl knew that as much as they loved each other, seeing her scarred face every day was a perpetual reminder of the unspeakable horrors that had befallen them. Joy needed someone else to look at, to be with her in her pain, in the places Bethany wasn't welcome and couldn't go.

Even though it cut her to the core to know she couldn't be—_enough—_for her little sister.

"Always lacking," she whispered into the night. "Always—too slow to catch her, to hold on."

"Bethany."

She startled, jolting backward and falling onto her tailbone on the cold porcelain tile, and stared up—and up, and _up—_at the imposing silhouette of Gabriel the archangel, God's messenger. "Oh," she said from her place on the floor. "Hi."

She thought he was too beautiful, so sharp and painfully cut against the stark and barren wastelands that it hurt her to look at him. Her fingers crept again to the destroyed corners of her face, and for the first time she was self-conscious of her scar, and ashamed. His wings shifted behind him, rustling and clinking in the shadows, as though there were metallic chimes hidden among the feathers. How free he was, and how sad—and if only he hadn't been so _sad,_ and injured, and lost; if only his freedom hadn't seemed like such a burden to him; if only he didn't want, so desperately, to belong to a home that wouldn't have him—if only, then she wouldn't have bound herself to him now.

The reality of it was like a knife-wound all over again.

"Ungh," she gasped, crumpling over her stomach at the sudden nausea there. With a suddenness that shocked her and almost sent her scurrying backward, she felt his hand on her shoulder, then her brow. It was heavy and dry, the palm as large as her face. She lifted her gaze to him and stared as his eyes lit up the darkness, blue lightning and meteors. The brightness of them illuminated the planes of his face, his high cheekbones, smooth and slanting.

He had the end of the world in his eyes.

He searched her face, then lifted her easily, his hands gently gripping her shoulders. "Go to bed, Bethany," he said, and in the darkness she thought his voice sounded confused—but surely she was mistaken.

She looked up at him slowly, the bright light of his eyes—like lighthouses, like beacons—and the softness of his mouth, which seemed perpetually poised on the edge of a frown. She had never seen him smile—not even once in the last few days—and the realization made her heart plummet in her chest, leaving a gaping void.

"Oh," she said, looking up at him, recognizing the feeling of it. "_Oh._ Well…hell."

**Word Count: 778  
>Completed: April 19, 2011<br>I like to play with double-meanings in titles; they are fun. This one might be a triple. You get electronic cookies if you send me your interpretations in a review, haha. I hope everyone liked this chapter—it is my favorite so far (the end makes me giggle) and also, I will be away for the upcoming holiday, so it is a brief little gift to you to tide you over till Monday or Tuesday. In the meantime, ladies (mostly) and gents (maybe), have a happy Holy Week/Passover. **


	13. XI: An Overture

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels

**Rating: **TA for implied?romance.

**Summary: **Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.

**Disclaimer: ***obligatory insert*

**Chapter XI: An Overture**  
><em>If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land.<em>  
><strong>2 Chronicles 7: 14<strong>

"I wish to learn about humans," he said slowly. "And you…can tell me about them."

"Oh no," Bethany protested in the night. They had not stopped at a house, but in a farmer's field—barren for the ruined irrigation system—for the night. Joy slept in the backseat of the truck whom the sisters had christened _Baby_, and Bethany was sprawled on the roof of the cab, gazing up at the heavens. The stars stung the sky above them. "I can only tell you about me."

He looked over his shoulder and upward, gauging her, then nodded once, firmly, as though he understood her point. "You are not representative of the population," he acknowledged, and she laughed shortly.

"Was that a compliment?" she queried, but didn't wait for his answer. "Why do you want to know?"

"It matters?" he asked from his place in the bed of the truck. He was leaning against the cab, his wings spread and flattened like the back of a great throne; Bethany rolled over above him, peering down. Her eyes shone like amber in the moonlight, glossy and strangely full of light, and her hair made a dark curtain that brushed his shoulder. He looked up. In the darkness, her scar looked almost purple, and narrower, as though it had been delicately drawn across her features with a fine paintbrush and not gouged through tearing flesh. If it weren't for his angelic eyesight, perhaps he would not even be able to tell how it pulled at her cheek or ruined one side of her lip—not without the desert sun glaring down on her.

"It does," she said seriously. "It will affect how I teach you. I mean, should I go all NatGeo on you? _These are the eating and breeding habits of human beings. Notice how they dwell in packs." _He blinked, and her smile turned very gentle and sad. "Or is it something a little less tangible—and a little more real—that you're looking for?"

It was a struggle to find the right words. "I do not know," he said at last. "Only—that Father sees something in you. And Michael. Meanwhile, it has always been a trial for me to—" He paused, and hesitated. "To grasp that which makes humans so infinitely holy in my Father's eyes, what it is that brings Him such delight. Even when He resents you, when He sees that there is nothing left to salvage, He still hopes—_needs _to hope, as Michael says—in you." He paused. "All of my service to your kind thus far has only been because He so wills it. It does not please me to spend time on earth, consorting with mankind."

Her penny-bright eyes had somehow grown even sadder. "Is that the reason you're here? To understand His love for us?"

He made some sweeping gesture, unintentionally revealing in its helplessness. Her breath caught; it hurt to see one as strong and large and beautiful as him looking so powerless. "I long to return to my Father," he said, and it was answer enough.

**Word Count: 517  
>Completed: April 24, 2011<strong>


	14. XII: Lesson One

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XII: Lesson One**  
><em>While I, Daniel, was watching the vision and trying to understand it, there before me stood one who looked like a man. And I heard a man's voice from the Ulai calling, "Gabriel, tell this man the meaning of the vision." As he came near the place where I was standing, I was terrified and fell prostrate. "Son of man," he said to me, "understand that the vision concerns the time of the end."<em>  
><strong>Daniel 8: 15-17<strong>

"—then I'll teach you," Bethany said from her perch. "Now tell me," and her voice turned almost shy, "what it is about us that—repulses you?"

A less-dignified creature might have shrugged. Only a twitch of his brow betrayed him; still, he was surprised at his own lack of control. "Every moment," he said, the words short and clipped, "I see you committing the same wasteful sins, again and again."

Her eyes didn't even flicker, though they were full of something wary and sad. They stared into him, searching for something, and he held her gaze readily, unable to stem the flow of his own rising ire.

"The few among you who do not actively court the fallen angels are rare, and even then, most are weak of heart, and easily swayed. You are ignorant to the fact that you were born into a world at war, romanced by God Himself, and you disdain Him instead. Father has given you a sacred gift, holy beyond all measure," he murmured fiercely at her, "and you have squandered it and debased it. Still, He has raised you up—again and again—in spite of how you continue to break His heart with every breath you draw."

And then, whatever it was she was looking for in him—she found it, and softened. A smile curved over her tattered mouth and he grew very still, disconcerted by the sight of it. It was a warm smile, as full of sunrise as her eyes, and tender.

"I think," she said softly, "it's our brevity." Her eyes ventured tentatively to his and her smile was not quite an admonishment, but an invitation. For a moment he was confused—he could not remember what had elicited her response.

"How old are you, Gabriel?" she said lightly, almost teasingly. Her hair swept lightly across his face, smelling of high altitudes and cold mountains, as she readjusted herself on the roof. Resolutely, he dropped his head to gaze out at the horizon on the field, though he knew she still watched over him. "You've a fair number of years on me, I'd wager."

There was a shifting sound, and her voice suddenly grew haunted and small. "We're over so quickly, you know. By the time we learn anything—it's done. We're ready to die. And our children, or our grandchildren—or our little sisters—have to go on without us, and make their own mistakes."

He glanced up at her sharply, jarred more than he'd like to admit at the allusion to Joy. She met his gaze quickly, a disarming grin on her face. Fleeting as it was, though, he saw through it: it was full of pain, and a poignant and strangely soft kind of bitterness.

He sucked in a breath at the starkness of it.

"You think we're purposeless," she said. "You think—what a horrible thing it is for you, to have to deal with this senseless, crushing mass. As a whole, we are sinning wretches; individually we are insignificant and meaningless."

He lifted his head in silent assent, his jaw clenched, his eyes stony. But she suddenly looked very tired, very broken, and she touched her own scar lingeringly, as though she could draw strength from the wound itself. The gesture—the way she brushed the ugliness marring her face—made something inside him loosen and tighten all at once, and he wanted to bind up her aches and bruises, just as she had once done for him.

"Then think," she said softly, "how much more horrible it is for _us."_

For a moment, her words did not make sense to him. He sat, still and silent, as they slowly penetrated, and suddenly he _did _feel it: the too-familiar ache of being cut adrift, of abandonment so bleak and lonesome it sucked the breath from his lungs. He groped for air, and her hands reached down to find him, touching his shoulders, somehow steadying him in spite of her frailty. And when he looked at her again, he found gentleness in her eyes, copper-penny-bright.

"The comma," she said with a dry, tender smile, "only knows it's in the middle of a sentence. If it's lucky, it might recognize that it's part of a page. But how could it ever be expected to see the whole story? Gabriel," she said, and hesitation filled her voice so heavily that it caught in her throat, stifling the words. "We—most of us—we long _so deeply _to be part of something bigger. To be something significant, and real. You—it would be difficult, and heartwrenching, I think, to see all of this human chaos and have to trust only in God's plan. But—you know your Father. You know you have a part to play in this, even if you don't know what it is." She met his eyes then, and he was amazed that she could do it, could hold his holy-fire gaze steadily with her own.

And he was amazed, too, at the entreaty etched on her face. He had seen that look in battle, or while herding lost souls into hell: a plea for mercy. Unvoiced, and silenced by something he couldn't comprehend—but she was begging nonetheless.

"Those of us who are lucky—we believe because we can feel it, something we can't name, deep in our guts and our bones. But for the rest of us—for all of us, at times, perhaps—" and her voice turned desperate, for a moment, pleading for some sort of reassurance he couldn't figure out how to give "—we just believe because the alternative, Gabriel, it's so unbearable."

**Word Count: 945  
>Completed: April 24, 2011<strong>

**The rough foundation for this particular scene was actually what started this whole fic. I loved it when I first wrote it and am unsure how I feel about it now.  
>In other news, I was blown away by all the extremely thoughtful and detailed reviews I received while I was gone. HOLY COW. Guys, you made my weekend even awesome and inspired me to get this double-chapter installment out tonight before bed instead of waiting till tomorrow. Thanks so much for your continued support…I only wish it were a more action-packed drabblish-thing for you. More up ahead, and to those of you curious: yes, you will find out about Bethany's scar, but it might be a bit. ;)<strong>


	15. XIII: Promised Land

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XIII: Promised Land**  
><em>Oh Lord my God, I cried out to You, and You healed me.<em>  
><strong>Psalm 30: 2<strong>

He spent his days with the younger sister, and his nights in the company of the elder. While they drove, he flew high overhead, keeping watch; when they stopped he would land beside them and sit with Joy while Bethany raided grocery stores and houses.

One day, while he stood at Joy's side just inside the convenience store, she was staring out the dust-streaked window into the hot, harsh light of the sun, and she said:

"Don't worry. She leaves money, you know. Not always enough, but it's more than most people do."

He did not look at her. "Sin is not relative," he said at last, and was pleased with the mildness of his tone.

Joy didn't seem to find his restraint so laudable. A furrow creased her brow and he was disappointed in spite of himself. He preferred her to be happy, or at least content. He was growing to enjoy their companionable silences: the words left unsaid, which lay between them like a thick, folded blanket.

"Did you ever wonder where we're going?" she suddenly shifted, and he paused to gather his thoughts. He tried to discern whether or not the question was philosophical in nature—the kind of question that her older sister was prone to asking—but Joy seemed to be more attuned to logic and fact than wonderment and awe. In either case, he supposed his answer was the same.

"No."

She snorted and leaned against the window, her palms and nose and forehead pressed against the dirty glass, her eyes still wide and staring sightlessly. "We're going to the Grand Canyon. I always wanted to go. When we were kids, I used to do research on it." A faint grin curved her mouth: real mirth. It was a rare but sweet thing to see on her face, and he grudgingly admitted that he treasured these moments. They were some of the few, too-brief times when he felt close to his Father once more. "I thought it was amazing, a powerful testament to the forces of nature and science. Beth—I don't think she cared too much. She was—well, you know how she is. She was always that way—she'd find such amazement in things no matter how simple or surprising they really were. Leaf-veins and river-rocks and sugar cubes, for crying out loud. She used to tell me, _Joy, don't you know? Everything in this world is a prayer."_

The words rang true for him in his core. For the first time, he wondered _who_ had wounded Bethany so brutally, who had marked her face. It seemed unjust, that a soul who was likely one of God's most perceptive—at least among mankind—should be trapped in a limited physical body that had been scarred by man.

"Anyway," said Joy, "I don't think she cared, really—if it was up to her, the one place she'd always wanted to visit was Alaska—but the night that the…that the angels came? She promised me she would take me there. And Bethany _always _keeps her promises."

He was vaguely surprised—more at himself than the story. He realized he had never really wondered about their circumstances this past Christmas, or how they ended up on the road, or why. Most survivors seemed to have banded together in enclaves and urban clusters, but not these two sisters: they had set out alone into unforgiving terrain. He narrowed his eyes at her, searching her profile as it smudged the glass.

"You have a story to tell," he said simply, and Joy's unblinking stare broke for a moment, her glazed eyes focusing on him. "A story you _want _to tell. Or you would not be saying this now."

She smiled, and he realized how much like her sister she looked: darker-eyed, scarless. "You must be right," she said lightly. "I don't know what it is though." Her eyes turned sad, and he thought how strange these two girls were, what a mystifying and strangely beautiful combination of laughter and sorrow, strength and frailty. For a moment, he could almost grasp it: what Father loved in them, what Michael admired.

"I'll tell you this, though," she said. "That whole night, she just held me. _So tight. _She told me stories. All her favorite memories of the two of us. I remember every word, Gabe. Every _word _of it. Around the blood and the bruises and the tears. And she promised that we would get through it, and when it was over, we'd go to the Grand Canyon. She gave me so much to hope for, Gabriel." She closed her eyes for the first time since she'd taken up her post at the window. _"She kept me safe."_

He could picture it: two girls, curled together in the darkness of a cellar, or beneath the stairs. The sounds of a dying city around them: screams, and sirens, and gunshots and laughter. And Bethany—whose voice reached out to him in the dark every night, to tell him stories of human beings, to try to explain how their hearts worked—her voice reaching out again, as she soothed her trembling and terrified sister with stories of their childhood, with bright dreams and meteors, with sweetness and fierce protection.

He thought of himself and his own brother—archangels of the Lord, justice and mercy personified—and how they had taken turns cutting each other down.

_Humans are complicated, _Bethany had told him only a few nights before. _We're so many kinds of bitter and beautiful, and you can never predict which thing will manifest, and maybe that's part of what makes us precious. When you think all hope is lost, Gabriel—_

_Oh, how we'll surprise you._

He could well see how Bethany's words would form a shield around her sister's heart, and keep her strong and safe in the deepest shadows on the darkest night at the farthest end of the world.

**Word Count: 974  
>Completed: April 26, 2011<strong>

**Oh my goodness, children. I think I just finished this story.  
>No, not here! It looks like there will be 39 chapters, including some interludes and an epilogue (I was hoping to pull for an even 40, 'cause well, Lent, but it wasn't meant to be). I think it might be harder for me to wait and post them than it is for you to wait and read them, but I want them all to be perfect (or as close as possible), so you can continue to count on getting one or two updates every one or two days. It is amazing how dear this has grown to my heart in the last few brief days.<br>In other news, some of you might have expressed some concern over my reputation as a writer of miseries. Well…I am giving you my solemn word that I will end this fanfiction on **_**A Note of Hope.**_** To me—perhaps weirdly—**_**Legion **_**was **_**always **_**about hope.  
>I hope you continue to enjoy, and I thank you all again for such lovely-wonderful reviews.<strong>


	16. XIV: Repent

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XIV: Repent**

_Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah.  
>Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you."<em>_  
><em>**Genesis 22: 2**

_**Then (approximately two weeks ago):**  
>They are just lost, <em>his brother had said. And also: _We must guard their hearts._  
>But out on the roof that night, the only sound Gabriel could hear was the sound of the blade as it pierced Michael's flesh, tearing through sinew and muscle and organ; he could feel the weight of his brother, holding him down in the darkness, pleading with him. And while Michael's death had seemed unbearable, it had also seemed <em>inevitable<em>, for had his brother not turned against their Father?

Under the jagged starlight, with the safety of shingles beneath his feet, Gabriel could remember the strangling in his throat. He had never been ashamed of his tears—they were simply part of what his Father had created in him—but neither was he particularly prone to them. Still, wrestling with his own grief over Michael's betrayal—for Gabriel had long ago vowed he would _ never _hurt their Father, never disobey Him, never cause him the anguish that others might—and his secret longing to spare his brother, to embrace him…even now, the memory of it brought a sharpness to his eyes.

"Who is lost now, brother?" he asked darkly, and the words seemed to echo in the vast emptiness of the desert. For a moment, too, it seemed as though the whole desert were _inside _him. "Will you come to salvage me, too?"

Because his brother's embrace, trying in vain to hold him back from his pursuit of the child, had been echoed again that night as a young human girl had clung to him desperately from the backseat of a vehicle, and since he had cared not at all for her survival—had been, in fact, the angelic general responsible for the pending termination of the human plague—it had not even occurred to him to shield her from the brunt of their impact when they were thrown. Now Gabriel stood immobile on the roof, utterly alone, but he swore he could still feel her soft and fragile arms wrapped around him. It would have been so _simple _a thing, to turn in midair, to wrap her in the impenetrable armor of his wings.

The girl had been sulky and defiant, and her clothing had been vulgar, but she had also been brave, and perhaps…not so very different from this younger sister, here and now, whom Gabriel found strangely endearing.

And that was not all that clung to him, either.

There was the wail of the child in his ear, and though he had managed to ignore it at the time of pursuit—had shelved it entirely, in fact; had deafened himself to all it entailed—it echoed around him now. He recognized the sound of it in his soul: not the whining of a startled infant, but the weeping of a Son who had been abandoned by His Father.

_Why have you forsaken me?_

Not only did Gabriel recognize the sound of it, but he was sure his own spirit now rose in an answering cry.

And then there was the man who had saved someone else's hysterical wife, at the cost of his own life—and another man, broken-backed on the floor behind a bar, who had given Gabriel a sharp sneer and a glint of his eye before immolating himself in one last attempt to save—

To save the child perhaps, and maybe the mother, but more than this:  
>to save his <em>son.<em>

_Humans, _Gabriel thought. How they haunted him.

He swallowed. The thing in his heart opened and wept blood, but he had no context for the gaping pain, for the strange and hollow sense of loss that pervaded him. He sucked in a breath, trying to fill it with air, but it would not go away. He only knew—

He only knew that somehow—in trying so desperately to please his Father, to serve Him faithfully and to never give Him cause for heartache or sorrow—he had managed to accomplish exactly the opposite.

But _how? _Perhaps if he could uncover this one thing, this mystery—perhaps then he could return home, and never repeat the error again. Perhaps—

And then there was a muffled thump, and a sliding sound, and _that woman _was climbing across the roof in her awkward, shuffling human way, and he turned away from her. Her wound disturbed him: rarely did he see such a fitting manifestation of human corruption and weakness, and yet she seemed to wear her ugliness with flagrant disregard. Where she was blessed in that she had kept both eyes—and perhaps they had once been lovely enough, for didn't Father create all things in beauty and innocence? Though certainly nothing seemed to remain that way once it had existed too long beside humanity—where she was blessed to have kept them, the scar then proceeded to peel its way through her lip, and it seemed to him particularly unsettling.

It was not the scar itself, he supposed, allowing his glance to flicker over her disdainfully. It was everything it seemed to represent.

"You look—full of sorrow," the scarred sister said, and he turned his gaze back to the horizon, and he firmly shut her out, _shelved _her, as he had once done with the wail of a newborn child whose cries now resonated deep within his heart.

_Who is lost now, brother?_

**Word Count: 869  
>Completed: April 27, 2011<br>These two chapters—**_**Repent **_**and **_**Be Saved—**_**are companion pieces.  
>In case you didn't notice (I always struggle with the visual component of these cues), <strong>_**Repent**_** takes place approximately two weeks prior (sometime after **_**Fear Not, **_**but before **_**Exile**_**), while **_**Be Saved**_** rejoins us in the proper, chronological narrative stream, right here and now.  
>Regarding <strong>_**Repent: **_I struggled with the placement for this chapter_,_ which I had originally imagined coming much later in the story, after Gabriel's perception of Bethany has altered significantly. I really wanted to show the contrast in how he regards her. However, the story felt imbalanced that way, and eventually I found the perfect (I hope) place for it.  
>As a sidenote, I <em>do not <em>typically write crying men. Gabriel, however, manages to wear it so well. I was moved and amazed by his ability to maintain his dignity and stoicism while weeping in the movie, and I hope that has translated here. It might be a difficult feat to accomplish—after all, I do plan on bludgeoning him with sorrow. :)


	17. XV: Be Saved

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XV: Be Saved**_  
>Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side,<br>I will not believe._**  
>John 20: 25<strong>

_**Now (present day):**_  
>"What caused this?" he asked one night, as they sat companionably on the roof. She was almost leaning against him, and he could feel the fragile warmth of her soft human body. Now he reached out with blunt, calloused fingers to trace the air above her scar, a silent benediction.<p>

She touched her wound lingeringly. It was healing nicely, though his own sliced abdomen was already completely made-new.

"Love," she said, and her eyes were haunted and soft. "I don't mind it—most of the time."

He wondered when she _did _mind it. He remembered her bowed low on the bathroom floor, her face pressed to cold porcelain, her soft and anguished words in the darkness.

"It is a sin against God," he told her solemnly, and he meant that she'd been made so-_lovingly_-that the wound seemed somehow profane. Grudgingly, haltingly, he was beginning to recognize that there was something very sacred here. Haphazard, conflicted, full of grace: he could think of a thousand things that his Father had created— tidal waves, thunderstorms, caterpillars, sunrises—and she somehow encompassed them all.

She had, he conceded silently, a strange ability to see inside a thing, to the heart of it, and urge it out into the light.

But she responded slowly, thoughtfully, her eyes full of questions and _yes_es. "Humans—we hold onto our pain," she told him after along moment. "So tightly. We don't know how to let it go; we're afraid to. It carves us into who we are. In some ways, it's how we identify ourselves. It's—such a large part of how we know who we are."

He eyed her consideringly. His finger came out, calloused and blunt, and she flinched when he touched the edge of her scalp—then went very still as he lingeringly traced the ragged scar that ran the length of her face. She was blessed, he thought again, that it had missed her brilliant amber eye.

Nevertheless, the scar did not _make_ her. "You are not carved by pain," he told her firmly.

She raised her eyebrows: the finely arched left one, dark and flawless, and the one on the right, which had been divided by her wound. "No?"

He shook his head, almost reluctantly. "I know you by your laughter, by the way you touch your sister's face."

**Word Count: 389  
>Completed: April 27, 2011<br>These two chapters—**_**Repent **_**and **_**Be Saved—**_**are companion pieces.  
>In case you didn't notice (I always struggle with the visual component of these cues), <strong>_**Repent**_** takes place approximately two weeks prior (sometime after **_**Fear Not, **_**but before **_**Exile**_**), while **_**Be Saved**_** rejoins us in the proper, chronological narrative stream, right here and now.  
>Regarding <strong>_**Be Saved: **_This is one of those chapters (originally entitled _Doubting Thomas, _for pseudo-obvious reasons) that I loved originally and now am uncertain of. I hope it does not assume too abrupt a leap in Gabriel's perception of Bethany (I am always afraid of my characters falling in love too quickly, the poor dears).


	18. Interlude II: Baptism

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Interlude: Baptism**_  
>And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water;<br>and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink._**  
>Genesis 21:19<strong>

"_Holy—_" Bethany started, and she cut herself off before casting a radiant grin at Gabriel. "Sorry," she said sunnily, in a way that made him think she wasn't sorry at all.

Joy was skipping in circles. He did not think he had ever seen her so—_pleased. _When she began wriggling out of her jeans, Gabriel recoiled, almost stumbling backward out of the bathroom door, if only his heavenly grace had allowed it.

"Gabriel," Bethany said lightly, teasingly. "Are you blushing?" She pulled her own sweatshirt over her head, grinning.

"Men are the same everywhere," the younger sister sniffed. "Even in heaven. Pigs."

Clad only in a pair of short boxers and a snug white tank top, Bethany climbed over the edge of the whirlpool bathtub while Joy rifled through the cabinets, singing, "_Bubble bath, bubble bath, where are you?"_

"Hurry up, monkey-face"—_monkey-face?—_Bethany directed at her sister, and clearly the angel had been forgotten in favor of warm water and heated jets.

Stiffly, Gabriel turned on his heel and closed the door behind him. He was uncertain why he felt so uncomfortable—it certainly was not as if he were particularly vulnerable to the temptation of human flesh. Nevertheless, the thought of the older girl, half-dressed and surrounded by water, presented conflicting responses in his person.

The tub itself was huge. Joy had screamed when she'd come across it while exploring the night's new lodgings. Both Gabriel and Bethany had come running, and when they'd burst through the bathroom door, the archangel had made it a point to fan his wings in front of the older sister in order to better protect her.

He did not acknowledge that it had been an instinctive move, rather than simply a logical one.

But Joy had only been grinning—_grinning!_ a thing Gabriel had never seen before on her young and haunted face_—_and indulging in some strange combination of ridiculous gyrations and arm gestures apparently meant to convey triumph. Bethany's mouth had responded in kind, stretching into a smile that should have turned her ruined face into a hideous caricature of God's creation, but instead made Gabriel suck in a breath of surprise.

Now he heard laughter from behind the closed door: water running, and splashing, and giggles. _Monkey-face, _he heard again in Bethany's timbre, and _Fuzz-Noggin! _He leaned back against it and—just for a moment—closed his eyes and listened. Something of their lightness pierced him: he didn't think, in the last few weeks, that he had heard either of them sound so carefree, so happy.

Innocent.

The piercing sensation left a wound, which welled with an emotion he couldn't name—regret, perhaps. For a moment he grappled with the feeling, trying to lock it away, before reminding himself that the words of the heart were his Father's way of speaking. When he brought out the emotion—to examine it, experience it—he suddenly knew without a doubt that the apocalypse was the reason for these sisters' perpetual sorrows.

That _he _was the reason.

His heart twisted in midleap, and he furrowed his brow in confusion. He had always viewed Armageddon as…necessary. Inconvenient. Irritating, perhaps. For the first time, shrouded in creeping steam from beneath the bathroom door, he found it vaguely—painful.

The water in the bathroom turned off, turned on, turned off again. The sisters' voices grew quieter, confidences punctuated by moments of silence or Bethany's low laugh. He waited, waited, waited some more, till the sun was setting and he heard a sweet, quiet crooning from inside.

He hesitated, then turned and tapped lightly on the door. He had charged himself with a duty to protect these humans, and they needed to eat. When he opened the door, the room was full of clouds and the low rumble of the whirlpools, bubbling like some artificial hot spring. Bethany was propped against one side of the tub, a chair for her sister; Joy had leaned against her, back-to-chest, and was dozing with her head tucked into her older sister's shoulder.

Bethany stopped her wordless singing. "Hi," she said softly, and Gabriel remembered his first glimpse of her in the back of their pickup truck. In her loose embrace, Joy shifted; Bethany scooped a handful of her sister's cascading hair back from the younger girl's brow.

"Our parents had a tub like this," Bethany said softly. "When we were kids, we used to put on our swimsuits in the winter and play in it like a swimming pool. When I went away to college, every time I would come home—it became a sort of tradition. I'd come visit and we'd steal their bathroom for a few hours as a place to tell each other all our secrets. It was—such a safe haven."

He watched her silently, carefully, and did not speak, though the steam had already crept between his feathers, leaving his wings heavy and sodden and straining at the roots. Something was different about this story, and it took him a moment to realize what it was. Bethany might pretend to be an open book—she might be more forthcoming than her little sister when it came to ideals and interpretations, to discussions of concepts like mercy and love and humanity. But he thought it was the first time, perhaps, that she had told him something of _herself—_of her story, who she was and what she'd seen. This was the source, he realized: of all her Great Truths, and many of the small ones. The Book of Bethany, so to speak.

He didn't want to interrupt, and risk silencing her.

"I had taken a week off of work to visit for the holidays," she recalled in a faraway voice, her eyes on her sister. "Afterward—after the apocalypse—we were both covered in blood, and Joy couldn't stop—panicking. Crying. She would sob and sob, then look at her bloody hands and start screaming, or smell it in her hair—most of the real danger was over and she was safe, but I wasn't sure she would _make_ it." She pressed her lips to the crown of her sister's head, and the sunset light reflected off the mirrors in patterns of dusk-purple and gold. Her eyes were distant and coppery, shining; between the two girls, their clothing drifted, filmy and transparent in the bath. "I managed to get her into the tub, just to try to get the blood off of her. I washed it out of her hair, off her skin. She fell asleep on me then, too. We stayed in the water for—two days? Maybe three. There was—so much of it."

"Blood?" he asked quietly.

She nodded. "Our parents'," she said softly, stroking her sister's brow in the curling mist. "Some of our neighbors'. I wasn't sure she was ever going to be okay." She looked up into his eyes, and he suddenly wondered if anyone had worried about whether or not _she _would be okay, or if there had been someone to wash the carnage from _her_ hair. How clearly he could see it: Joy, hunched over and weeping, her spindle-thin shoulders rising from the water while her older sister, with wounded eyes, quietly cleaned her of blood.

"We left the next day," Bethany said. She looked around the bathroom. "This—here and now?—it was like being home again, for just a few hours. Before—_everything_."

She touched her sister's forehead again, and her own torn face, and she shivered.

"I'm so cold," she said, although the steam was still rising in streamers from the water.

Silently, Gabriel reached for a towel from the shelf, and held it open.

**Word Count: 1,281  
>Completed: April 29, 2011<br>I'm not sure if I can fairly call this installment a drabble, as it totally broke the 1,000 word rule I generally try to follow. I suppose I could have divided it into two "interludes," but I think I am very happy with the way it turned out.  
>Thanks again to those of you who have left reviews, especially the ones that are honest and direct, yet still encouraging (and very detailed!). I appreciate it so much and it really gives me some good material to inspire, sculpt, and edit my future entries. As a writer, I know what's going on "behind the scenes," so it's very good to hear from the objective audience everything that works andor doesn't work. Not only that, but since I am not a very faithful reviewer myself (I tend to avoid doing it unless I can leave a thorough, well-articulated comment), it always amazes me when my readers are willing to take the time to craft a thoughtful response to my chapters. Thank you so much, and have a wonderful weekend!**


	19. Interlude III: Full of Grace

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Interlude: Full of Grace**  
><em>At that moment heaven was opened,<br>and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him._  
><strong>Matthew 3: 16<strong>

He hesitated, crouching on the eaves. Their silence—a seldom occurrence between himself and this strange, scarred elder sister—was comfortable. Usually these late-night, star-shadowed sessions were full of slow, heavy words, each swollen with laughter or sadness—or in his case, sorrow and something vaguely like resentment. Generally, the closest they came to _silence _was only a pregnant pause in Bethany's speech.

But he had a question, one that had been clinging to the inner walls of his heart ever since Bethany's slow and careful story, delivered between curtains of steam and bathwater, her words whispery over the low rumble of the whirlpool jets. He needed desperately to ask this one question, though he had no idea why.

_Do you know what I am?_ It danced on the edge of his tongue—though it wasn't quite the right question, and of course the answer was _yes. _Instead, this:

"Do you understand what I am?" –It was out before he even realized he'd said it.

She slanted a sideways look at him, eyeing him as though he'd suddenly gone mad—a distinct possibility, given that he'd been spending day and night in the company of these two strange sisters. And perhaps, too, it was _he _who was no longer certain of what he was, or his purpose.

Perhaps he was hoping she had the answer.

"Uhm, I had assumed you were an angel," she said slowly, as though speaking to a very stupid child. "An archangel, actually."

His brow furrowed painfully. "Do you understand—what I was sent here to do?"

Her perplexed expression eased, as though she suddenly understood him; she averted her eyes while a strangely lighthearted smile flirted with the corner of her ruined mouth.

"I'm guessing it was to kill us all."

He reared backward, visibly recoiling, in what was perhaps the strongest physical response he'd ever experienced. His heart thudded painfully and unexpectedly in his chest.

She stared at him openly now, concern written over every damaged feature, and for a moment her worry seemed more prominent than her scar. Clearly she had not expected her faint jest to stir such a reaction. "Are you okay?" she asked tentatively, and he shook his head—then nodded, baffling even himself. It had sliced through him—so cleanly, so brightly and scaldingly—to hear this thing stated so baldly, to hear it phrased in terms of _us _rather than in terms of _other. _

And yet: it seemed as though her voice had unburdened him of a thing he hadn't even known he was carrying.

"There was a woman," he breathed at last, though his words tasted bloody around the heart in his mouth. "There was a Child—"

Her hand glided through the darkness like a shy dove and rested lightly on his knee. He stared at it as though it were a wild, dangerous creature: easily crushed beneath his own grip, or his mace—but liable to bite.

"I was going to destroy them," he said, still staring at her slender fingers, calloused and slicked with moonlight. His voice was hushed, as though she'd called the confession from his secret heart. "He was going to be—He _is _the Messiah."

_It might have been you, _he thought, but didn't say. He did not know why this thing seemed so important. _It might have been you, and Joy._

She was silent in the star-pierced night, but she did not pull away.

"What are your wounds?" he asked, almost desperately, remembering their conversation about humans and their pain, clutching at their open wounds as though they could make something from them.

She laughed softly, and the sound seemed to layer itself on his shoulders, lightly and comfortingly. Nevertheless, his wings hunched defensively, and they shivered like metal chimes and tree-leaves in the night. "It doesn't work like that," she teased, and he let out a soft and unexpectedly human huff of exasperation. "It _doesn't,"_ she insisted. "I can't just tell you _all _my secrets because you've _finally _trusted me with yours." She paused, then added gently, "Besides, the timing is all wrong. Just—let me do this thing for you."

And she sat with him in the stark, starred silence, and her hand stayed on his knee like a small, warm, living thing: like a mouse, or a very trusting bird.

**Word Count: 723  
>Completed: May 1, 2011<br>Back down to the appropriate word-count-range! Phew.  
>I wrote this at work (long after this story was supposed to be done) and I think it might be my favorite one so far. Hmm, interesting. In other news, I am getting THE SWEETEST, KINDEST, MOST ENCOURAGING reviews on this fic, perhaps out of all the other fics I've ever written. I wonder why? Are <strong>_**Legion **_**fans just naturally more tenderhearted? Is the note of hope and tenderness I'm trying to impart on this story affecting my readers too? Either way, it's doing me worlds of good, as I am trying for a very gentle and soft story (even in the impending tragedy), and you all are inspiring more of that feeling inside me. Thank you so much, people! :)**


	20. XVI: Bethel

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XVI: Bethel**_  
>Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?"<br>Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."_  
><strong>Matthew 18: 21-22<strong>

"Michael tells me that humans are capable of so many deep kindnesses," Gabriel confided only a few nights later. They had not moved on yet from the house of the giant bath, but he was coming to realize that Bethany had crafted a quest that was more about the journey than the destination—and that each moment became a carefully cultivated opportunity, somehow engineered to try to offer some sad bit of healing to another part of her sister's soul.

And in spite of all this new knowledge, he was still startled at his own tone. When had he begun speaking to her in this way, as though she might have all the answers? Before, he had gone to her to teach him, but he had expected something—different. Less.

And instead…

Instead he thought he might be learning just as much about himself as he was about her.

"We are," Bethany said lightly, wrapping her arms around her knees. The shingles beneath them were pebbled and sharp, and Joy had joined them on the roof tonight, for whatever foolish whim had struck her adolescent heart. She'd laid out a comforter on the roof, and her head was pillowed on Bethany's sneakers. In the darkness, the younger sister let out a soft snore, and Bethany chuckled and stroked the hair back from her sister's brow.

"We're a pretty dichotomous people," the older girl said, her voice low. "We do—amazing things, and awful things. There's rarely a middle ground." She leaned sideways, briefly pressing her shoulder into his bicep, and he had grown to recognize it as a gesture of camaraderie. He allowed it, and he might—perhaps—have secretly savored the fleeting contact and all it represented. "What particularly were you thinking of, anyway?"

A less-dignified creature might have shrugged. "Many things," he evaded. "Defenders of humanity tell me that mankind has _hope, _but I have already seen this in action—they hope to the point of foolishness."

She laughed softly. "Yes," she agreed. "I've been guilty of that myself, once or twice."

"Some say—that they have inherited Father's tendency to create. That their ability to imagine a thing is beyond the scope of angelic knowledge—but I have never heard a human music that resonates in both the ears and the soul like the songs of the heavenly chorus."

"Rap and country just don't cut it," she acknowledged. He cast a sharp glance at her. Her expression was schooled in innocence, but her copper eyes sparkled teasingly.

"Michael—" he said, and his face hardened almost imperceptibly, as though he'd peeled open a healing wound. "Michael claimed the secret beauty of humans was in their ability to forgive."

She looked at him sharply—for a moment she wondered if he _knew—_but she kept her tone careful and light. "We _are_ pretty good at that, I guess."

Now he was looking at her more closely, his eyes slanting sideways in the dark. She supposed her own quick glance had given her away, had alerted him to her secrets. His eyes cut her open in the way that she imagined only angel-eyes could—bright and full of holy fire, scathing, cauterizing. She shivered a little and looked away.

"Explain," he ordered, though the word was patient and curious rather than demanding.

For a long moment she was silent, her eyes moving from her sister's face and out to the empty horizon. How desolate the desert was now. Most people had flocked to the cities, to live in enclaves and clans, to try to build something new. What had made her think that running into the vast wastelands was a good plan? That hopping from town to decimated town was good for her sister, or that adopting an archangel would somehow make the world better and brighter and easier?

And yet, it had been the only thing she could think of to heal Joy's hidden wounds.

"Would you have really murdered that woman and her baby?" she whispered at last.

"Yes," he said without hesitation, though she saw his eyebrow flinch at the verb. _Murder. _She supposed he had preferred to think it terms of execution and extermination, and she could tell in the set of his mouth: he wondered if she judged him now. It cut her to the quick to see it—if she hadn't judged him when he'd first told her, what made him fear it now? Her heart ached for him, for his loneliness, for the seemingly painful burden of his freedom.

She was silent for a long moment, and her eyes wandered back to her sister. "Would you do it again?" she asked gently.

He was still. He knew the _right _answer, the one she wanted to hear, the one that his Father—apparently—had wanted to hear. He thought of Joy and her silent staring, of Bethany's bright eyes and dark scar. "I do not know," he said at last, and it was truthful.

She nodded, quiet, and for a while they sat in silence. She watched him mull, uncharacteristically, over what she might be thinking, and was surprised that it seemed to matter to him.

To ease him, she said, "We all do…what we think we must. To survive."

Surprise flickered briefly in his set and stoic features. He shook his head, though she knew he thought it would damn him in her eyes. "Angels do not concern themselves with life and death—not like humans do."

She turned toward him, eyes bright with both sadness and laughter. "I wasn't talking about life and death. Not completely, anyway." A pause, and she turned her eyes to the shadows beyond. "Surviving…it's just….you take hold of the thing that is most precious to you, and you try to keep it safe." She flicked a glance to him. "You were trying to honor the word of your Father, weren't you?" It wasn't really a question, and so the _yes _that resounded in his heart was only an affirmation of the truth which she stated. "I," she said slowly, and her hand crept across the night to brush back a lock of hair from her sister's temple, "I could survive many things. Not one of them includes losing her."

She saw him try to swallow. The corded muscles in his throat looked unnaturally tight. It was a strange condition, unfamiliar to him. She sighed.

"I don't think," she added softly, "that I could have survived leaving you in the desert, either." She hazarded a glance at him, her eyes skittish, though she kept her hand calm and soothing on her sister's cheek. He looked startled at her words, and his gaze jumped to lock with her own, wary and perplexed. She tried to shy away, but he held her eyes, unrelenting. She shuddered. "Even," she whispered then, "if you had killed me after. I know," she added suddenly, strongly, "that you might've. That maybe you even wanted to."

She saw him hold his breath. Her awareness had apparently left him momentarily stunned, though it was almost too fleeting for her to comprehend it. He hadn't imagined, she supposed, that she had for one moment been truly wary, truly frightened. He had thought her approach fueled by ignorance and stupidity, not—whatever it was that really drove her. She wasn't entirely sure herself.

"But if I had left—every night, I think, I would have woken up with questions. Regrets. I would have wondered what happened to you, if you were okay, if I could have helped. If my negligence and—and my fear…" she shivered, and tore her eyes away from his so forcefully that for a moment she _felt _it, and it _hurt—_"I would be haunted."

His eyes flickered—distant lightning, deep skies—and she thought he understood, then, if only abstractly—what she was offering. She didn't like to be obvious; it was uncomfortable, to say the words, to acknowledge it openly, and she had long ago learned from her sister that sometimes words of forgiveness only generated more pain. But she wanted to make sure he _knew_, that he might be secure and safe in the knowledge: that she had canceled whatever debt he might have owed her for the destruction of her family, of her world. Though he had told her he felt no compunctions in doing his duty—though he could not tell her he would not do it again—she had already absolved him. More: she had _understood _him, what he was, what he might do.

And still, she had lifted him out of the desert, and brought him into her home—where she hoped and prayed he knew he would always have a place.

"Gabriel," she said softly, because she had to, "the gates here will _never _be closed."

**Word Count: 1,471  
>Completed: May 2, 2011<br>Urk. Broke the 1000-word limit again. Why do I have a feeling this will be becoming a trend?**

**Mmm, I think I've re-read and revised this chapter too many times, because I can no longer tell if it's any good. In any case, part of this scene was inspired by another Legion fanfiction I read, though I **_**cannot **_**seem to remember or find which one it was (in either case, it was **_**good**_**, and so if I find it I will gladly credit it and then direct you all to read it). In this other fanfiction, there is a scene where a woman asked Gabriel, "Would you really have killed that woman and her baby?" (or something like this) and he tells her immediately and sincerely that he would have. The other fanfiction goes on to explore this thought, and it's really quite touching and amazing, but the scene kept playing over and over in my head: how else it might have gone, how another human might have responded, and how Gabriel might have changed (or might not have), and so on, so forth.**

**Since someone expressed interest in the titles of the chapters/drabbles, I also decided I will add a little section at the end of each chapter devoted to the meaning of the titles. In some chapters I may also discuss why I selected a certain title, but it is equally likely that I will leave you only with a literal description of what it means and allow you to draw your own interpretations. So:**

********The original title of this chapter was _Survival; noun. _I wanted it to function as a study of the definition of the word, what it means to Bethany, to Gabriel. But, you know, it just didn't fit into the title-themes I had been running with, and I like the new one just fine. Bethelis the place where Jacob dreamed of his ladder to heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it, and he created a monument/shrine there and named it, well, Bethel, which means _House of God. _I thought there were all sorts of fitting allusions here. [c. Genesis 28]


	21. XVII: By Wind, By Water

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XVII: By Wind, By Water**_  
>Bitterly she weeps at night; tears are on her cheeks.<br>Among all her lovers there is no one to comfort her._**  
>Lamentations 1:2<strong>

"What are your wounds?" he asked once more, after they finally left the house. It had been their longest stop so far—they had lasted there over a week—but they hadn't spoken again of such deep or painful things since the last time he'd asked her, and so his voice splintered through the silence.

She blinked up at him, owl-eyed. "What?"

"The wounds you carry with you," he asked. "What are they, Bethany?" His voice was inexorable, and austere, but somehow gentle in spite of all that. She pulled her gaze away and looked out over the purple rooftops, smoky in the predawn light. Her scar was healing cleanly now, but it would always be there: a stark reminder of something she could not share with him.

"They're—" she said, and paused, and weighed her words in her open palms on her knees. "Small," she finished at last, and the corners of her lips were tight but her mouth—oh, her mouth was a wealth of vulnerability and pain. "Compared to some peoples', I mean. Compared to Joy's."

He swallowed the questions in his mouth and tilted his head instead, watching her, gauging her like an enemy. Which she wasn't. Which she could not be—never again.

Not after this.

"Nothing small could do this to you," he said after a moment, and he felt very certain, watching the way her mouth trembled. She was—strong, as a mountain in the face of a storm. He would not have credited it before, but it was the truth.

And she smiled. Of course she did. "_Everything _small did this," she contradicted. Her eyelids fluttered, and closed. They were as soft and frail as a butterfly's wings. "It's like…erosion," she said, and chuckled softly. "The breaking down of a human being."

He thought he could reach out and take hold of her pain, let it run through his fingers like sand and grit. He would love to see her washed clean of it, bathed in the glory of God. He imagined the light would shoot out of the ends of her hair.

But as he watched, her copper-eyes grew bright, and wet. Her lashes suddenly grew slick and starlike, clustered together by the dampness of her barely-restrained sorrow. She fell utterly, terribly, uncharacteristically silent: her ruined mouth shivering, the muscle in her throat straining.

He went very still, just watching her, suddenly very aware of his own breath. If he moved too much, he thought her tears might spill over, and he wasn't sure what that would mean—only that it would be something awful.

**Word Count: 435  
>Completed: May 3, 2011<br>This drabble is only partially true. Obviously, with a huge scar running down her face and her little sister occasionally disappearing into a near-catatonic state, something huge **_**did **_**happen. But while I hope I have shown Bethany as a unique and complicated individual, she's also playing as a representative of humanity as a whole—and I do believe that it's **_**this **_**that hurts us most. Not the big things, but the daily grind.**

**This chapter is dedicated to every person who left a review or private message telling me that this story **_**affected **_**them, that it left them with a sense of peace or hope. I wanted to write a fiction about brokenness and about being made whole, and so there **_**is**_** tragedy here: in the past (behind the story) and in the future (ahead in the story), but it will **_**always **_**be followed by something tender and kind. I was hoping that my readers would "get" it, but I never imagined that they would **_**feel **_**it. So for all of you—particularly those in need of a little light in the darkness—**

**This is for you.**

****_By Wind, By Water _is a twofold title, though it does not stem from any particular bible passage. Wind and water are, of course, two of the most well-known forces of erosion. They are also two of the most well-known symbols of the Holy Spirit.


	22. XVIII:Trinity

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XVIII: Trinity**  
><em>A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.<em>**  
>Ecclesiastes 4: 11<strong>

"When we're done with the Grand Canyon, we're going north," Joy told him. "Will you come with us? I think we'll need you."

She humbled him with her honesty.

"What is north?" he asked, and she smiled faintly.

"Alaska," she confided. "Bethany doesn't know it yet, but by then it will be summer; we can get up there in time for good weather and whales and all the crap she wants to see."

He gauged her carefully. "This is good of you," he noted at last.

"She deserves it," Joy said simply. She smiled affectionately. "She saved us both, after all. She'll save anyone we come across, you know? Just you wait. And when we're done, she'll want to save even more."

They sat in silence for a moment, and Gabriel groped for words in the bright sunshine—though she couldn't tell by looking at him.

"Your sister is very heroic," he admitted at last. "But what is such a thing worth? This world has seen countless messengers, been saved countless times, and yet nothing changes. It remains the same festering sore. Heroism is lost—" o_n people like these, _he almost said, but he imagined Joy would not appreciate the sentiment. Moreover, he found—with a growing sense of unease—that he was no longer certain of the truth of such a statement.

And as expected, Joy stared at him, her dark eyes shining and wide, perhaps shocked by his sudden bluntness. He conceded his perception of humans hadbeen changing lately—but it did not change the truth of the matter, nor the direction of his curious questioning. _Heroism is lost. _Still, the pain in Joy's gaze was more poignant than he had expected.

"You misunderstand," she said at last, slowly. "In fact, I'm starting to think you've been misunderstanding every single thing Beth has been telling you, everything she's been living."

He tilted his head and waited.

"You don't save the world—you don't save _anyone _because they're _deserving_," she said softly, "or because you think they will change. You only give them another chance. You only save them—because you _can_. Because a real hero doesn't know how to do anything else."

**Word Count: 366  
>Completed: May 4<strong>**th****, 2011  
>Yay, word count!<br>Oh goodness, oh goodness. I am going through a rough time in my life right now, and every day I look forward to the comfort and kindness which so many of you offer through your very kind reviews. :) So yesterday afternoon, as a gift to all of you, I drew a quick sketch, which is view-able below (the link will be posted a few times within the following chapters, and will also be available on my author's page). **

**Simply copy & paste it into a browser address bar and remove the spaces. It's **_**very**_** rough, but it's a little sneak peek into Chapter 32, which is one of my favorites.**

**http :/ fyrefly-nyxa .deviantart .com /# /d3figm5 **

**Thank you, thank you, all of you.  
><strong>

****This chapter's title is pretty self-explanatory, I think. Nevertheless: a literal translation would be that Christian faith (generally, with some exceptions) generally considers God as a relational entity in and of Godself, and manifests that through the assertion that there are "three in one", or three parts to the whole: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. These parts reflect God's inherent desire to be in _connection_ (emotionally/spiritually), as well as three other characteristics: Creator, Redeemer, Pursuer.

This chapter was originally titled _A Point of Clarification, _based on Joy's "parting shot," but I liked the verse so much, and her initial request that Gabriel stay with them, that I decided to go with _Trinity _instead.


	23. Interlude IV: Song of Songs

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Interlude: Song of Songs**  
><em>His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as its cedars.<br>His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely.  
><em>**Song of Solomon 5: 15-16**

The wind and the dust had layered his skin with dirt. Though he could bathe if he so chose, it often seemed an inconvenience—though the holy fire burning under his skin had a tendency to scald away excess water that might otherwise weigh down his wings, sometimes the dust and grime would collect in rivulets between his feathers before drying there.

Though angels did not generate filth themselves, and lacked the unfortunate tendency to perspire, there were times—like now, out in the dirt and the sand and the sharp hot breeze—when he still required a method to ensure cleanliness.

He was standing out in the hot afternoon sun, with his outer armor shelled away and laid respectfully to one side, the skin of his torso taut and burnished coppery-rose between the fire in the sky and the fire inside him. Angelic prayers rippled over his chest and abdomen in dark rivers and ribbons of holy ink, an intricate covenant carved into his flesh. With a hand-towel Joy had found for him in the latest linen closet and the hose faucet running, he sluiced cold water over his skin, cleaning away the desert-dust.

It was like this that Bethany found him.

"Gabriel," she called, and rounded the corner—and then stepped backward, eyes wide, mouth parted. She turned abruptly, one hand lifted to her face as though to shield her eyes, but she kept glancing at him and then turning away, stammering apologies interspersed with the information she had sought him out to deliver—and nothing she was saying was coherent. He observed her bizarre behavior, trying to discern the source of her perplexing reaction, when it suddenly occurred to him that she found the sight of him…

…gratifying.

It was a strange thought—and oddly, not altogether displeasing. The sight of her blush was strangely endearing to him.

"You desire this physical shell?" Gabriel asked curiously, just to be certain.

Bethany flushed, and he realized that for the first time since he'd woken in the back of the sisters' Ford, she was flustered, uncomfortable, embarrassed.

"Well," she snapped in irritation, "He _did _make you beautiful." There was a pause while he pondered that, and then she added in a snarkish tone that surprised him anew: "Don't worry. I won't compromise your virtue."

With one swift, dismissive gesture, he waved away her concern—which would have been irrelevant even if it _had _been genuine—and studied her face instead. He had noted the delicacy of it before, beneath the scar: there was a certain softness to it that was absent in angelic features, a kind of vulnerability around the mouth and eyes that gave humans a look of perpetual fragility, even among the strong. Her eyes seemed like suns to him in that moment, and for a brief second the ragged scar only served to highlight the tenderness of her torn lips, the clarity of her brow.

"You are not unlovely," he offered at last, kindly. He watched, intrigued, as she stared back at him, myriad emotions running rampant across the face in question. Shock, disbelief, righteous indignation—

Then she threw back her head and laughed. "You _charmer,"_ she said.

**Word Count: 532  
>Completed: May 5, 2011<br>A quick little light-hearted interlude for you amidst all this seriousness. :)  
>I don't remember what inspired this drabble—only that I giggled uncontrollably while writing it.<br>I wasn't originally sure I would actually include it, but then I thought that it couldn't hurt. After all, though there will be no lemon in this fic (sorry, kiddies!), there were certain interested parties to whom I thought I could, ahem, "throw a bone." **

**That is: thank you for your wonderful, helpful reviews, Maladicta—this one's for you!  
>(And anyway, who hasn't occasionally pondered the thought of that, er, divine form?)<strong>

_**Also, the link the rough sketch/excerpt from chapter 32 as a thank you for all my very wonderful reviewers** (_**_simply copy & paste it into a browser address bar and remove the spaces):_  
>http : fyrefly-nyxa .deviantart .com /# /d3figm5 **

****_Song of Songs _is another name for _Song of Solomon_ or _Songs, _a book of the bible that relays the courtship and marriage of a lover and his beloved. Some say it was written by Solomon for a member of his harem; others say it was written by Solomon about a (possibly real or possibly fictional) girl who worked in the vineyards and a shepherd-boy in love; still others believe it to be a purely symbolic representation of either God and the Jewish people or Christ and the Church. In any case, it's a very sensual book, bordering on erotic, and incredibly beautiful. [c. Songs, Song of Songs, or Song of Solomon]


	24. XIX: Samaritan

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XIX: Samaritan**  
><em>The greatest among you will be your servant.<br>For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted._  
><strong>Matthew 23: 11-12<strong>  
><em>Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of Mine,<br>you did for Me._  
><strong>Matthew 25: 40<strong>

When they'd pulled into a ramshackle gas station that afternoon, preparing to raid the shop for bottles of water and fill up Baby's tank, an old man had exited the store, rifle in hand and ragged hat pulled low on his brow.

Gabriel had watched as they conversed from above—Bethany and the stranger—both gesturing while Joy hung back in on the other side of the truck, a palm shielding her eyes from the sun while she searched the sky for him. He'd dropped beside the younger sister, just in time to hear the end of Bethany's conversation with the old man.

"—no, not many. Most people we've run into were heading North or East in small…er, like caravans? They're kind of…congregating in the cities. If you're looking for a community, that's what I'd suggest."

"And no-one's given you two lasses any trouble on the road? I'd heard note of some more violent-types, raiders and such. I found a working radio station—they said there'd been looters lookin' for anything with wheels, that runs—to salvage for parts an' fuel," the man had asked, and Bethany had laughed.

"Well, Baby's hardly hanging together at this point anyway," she said, just as Gabriel stepped from behind the truck. "And anyway, we've been fine—like I said, we haven't come across many people—"

He'd noticed the man's eyes—they'd widened, just a bit, but it was all the warning Gabriel had needed.

"_Down!" _the stranger had yelled abruptly, shoving Bethany aside as he leveled the rifle at the archangel and pulled the trigger.

Gabriel had turned just in time to shield himself and Joy from the bullets, which _ping_ed off his armored feathers and ricocheted harmlessly into little explosions of sand.

"_Hey!" _Bethany had yelped, and Gabriel had turned just in time—appalled, heart slick with something like horror—to see her clinging to the man's right arm desperately. _"Stop! _What do you think you're _doing?" _

The man had shaken her off, but she'd given him pause. He'd eyed Gabriel warily, suspiciously, taking in the way the angel had shielded the teenager beside him—the teenager who was glaring with dark and furious eyes. The barrel of the rifle was still trained on him. "Lady," the stranger had said, "Do you know who this bastard is? What he's done?"

"Better than you can imagine," Bethany had said tightly, her hands locking on the barrel of the gun and pulling it firmly from the gas station owner's hands. The man had released the rifle readily, holding his hands up, palms out.

"Yeah, we know who he is," Joy had added loudly, stepping in front of Gabriel before he could think to stop her. "He's our _family."_

For a moment Gabriel had stood in silence, and for the first time since his creation he felt—

—stunned.

"This—_thing—_its friends and the other things like it—they're the ones—_responsible_ for all this madness. They're responsible for my—for my _wife—_" And the man's face had crumpled abruptly, like wet tissue paper, and he'd dropped his hands helplessly.

Bethany had set aside the rifle on top of a cement garbage can and reached out to him with entreating hands and said, "Please, let's go in. Gabriel will stay with my sister—"

And so, somehow, a brief stop that had originally been meant to take only ten minutes had turned into six-and-a-half hours. Gabriel watched, silent and fiercely intent, from a distance as Bethany and the old man conversed. They walked around the perimeter of the gas station yard; they hovered out back at a picnic bench coated in dust. Bethany sat on the table and swung her slender bare legs, listening with a tilted head to every word the widower said. Gabriel couldn't see her golden eyes from this distance, nor the scar that lopsided her face, but her caramel-dark hair spun on the breeze behind her like a shining banner, twisting in the air.

"Your staring at them so hard might make them burst into flame, but it won't make you hear them any better," Joy said at last, rolling her eyes. "Relax. You suck at being company today, Big Brother."

He said nothing, only narrowed his eyes. Perhaps if he squinted, he could read their lips.

The teenager sighed dramatically. "I can tell you what they're saying anyway."

Now he did turn to her, sharply, his mouth grim and turned down at the corners, but Joy was staring at her older sister. "He's telling her his life story. He's talking about the wife he loved more than anything, and how she was killed—but probably not till after she'd been possessed by some avenging angel." Her smile was close-lipped and wintry, her burnt-umber eyes like pieces of stone. "Maybe he had to kill her himself, the poor dear."

There was something in her hard gaze that chilled him. "Joy," he beckoned softly, calling her back, and she shuddered and glanced at him with a half-smile, half-shrug.

"And Beth will make all the right cooing noises, and ask all the right questions, until he's talking about all the sweet things instead of the sour, until he's forgotten that his wife was—lying dead on the kitchen floor, or in the bathroom, or down at Smoky's Bar with a hole in her head. Instead he'll be thinking about her apple pies, or how she looked working in the garden with a smudge of dirt on her nose. And soon Beth'll probably convince him to go to one of the cities, and she'll give him way more money than we can actually afford in the hopes that it's still worth something wherever he goes, and then we'll move on and we'll probably end up driving all night instead of stopping, because Bethany will be crying too constantly and—too inconsolably—to be willing to rest."

"Why?" he asked after a moment, his eyes returning to the gold-skinned girl with the swinging legs, her head cocked at a listening angle, her hair a twisting, gleaming flag behind her. He didn't know, though, if the question referred to this exchange between two lost humans after the apocalypse, or his own safety in this little family, the way that these sisters had somehow taken it upon themselves to be _his _guardians, rather than the other way around—their insistence on welcoming him in.

And in silence, on the edge of the roof, Bethany's hand on his knee, white with moonlight and sharp stars—

_Just let me do this thing for you._

Joy sighed again. "Because that's what Bethany _does_, Gabe. She calls people out of their pain."

**Word Count: 1,114  
>Completed: May 5<strong>**th****, 2011  
>I am so impatient to get through and post all these chapters! I am a little anxious with wanting you to read it <strong>_**all, **_**at least through the first revelation, which is coming up soon…I'm trying to remind myself that patience is a virtue and that timing is everything, haha. In the meantime:**

_**Here's the rough sketch/sneak-peak into Chapter 32 (simply copy & paste it into a browser address bar and remove the spaces). Thanks again to all the incredibly supportive reviewers!**_**  
>http : fyrefly-nyxa .deviantart .com /# /d3figm5 **

****Most of you probably recognize this title as it's a pretty well-known concept, but I will elaborate anyway. One of Jesus' parables is about a travelling Jew who is accosted by brigands and left for dead. Two of his countrymen, both supposedly men of spiritual fortitude, pass him by and ignore his plight. He is saved by a Samaritan instead (Samaritans historically did not have rapport with Jews), who cares for him and makes sure he is safe and looked-after before continuing on his way. [c. Luke 10]


	25. Interlude V: Resurrected

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Interlude: Lazarus**  
><em>It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.<br>_**Psalm 119: 71**  
><em>His wife said to him, "Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!"<br>He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"_

**Job 2: 9-10**

"It is remarkable to me," Gabriel said one day, "that you still have faith."

Bethany looked up, and it seemed to him she was amused. "Do I?"

He paused and considered. Her sister had told him, _Everything in this world is a prayer—_but perhaps that had been something uttered long ago, carelessly. He had known for a long time that humans threw faith around with reckless abandon, then expected it to bear them up in times of trouble. "Do you not?" he asked evenly, and she chuckled.

"I'm pretty good at hanging on to things," she said dryly. She paused and considered, tapping her foot as the gas tank filled. "Baby" seemed to require a full gallon of fuel to go even fifteen miles, but with the world in disarray, gasoline was inexpensive—at least in the sense that Bethany kept using a series of credit cards that no longer seemed to require payment. (_Of course, _she had told Joy cheerfully when the teenager had muttered something about accruing debt, _it was Judgement Day, kid. I'm sure the tax collectors were among the first to go.)_

And then she said slowly, "My parents bought our house when Joy and I were kids—well, built it, really. It was already in-progress when they stumbled across it but since they invested in it so early, they got to choose—you know, the windows, the doors, the fixtures—the way the light came in, the tile. But about three or four years later they realized that with all the moisture in the area, some of the support beams had rotted right through. They loved that house _so _much, Gabriel. They couldn't bear to part with it. So they tore it down and they saved all the parts of it they thought were precious, and then they rebuilt it—brick by painful brick—and restored it, strengthened it, used different types of paint and wood to seal it better. And I swear, Gabriel, it was even more beautiful the second time around."

He weighed the value of this seemingly meaningless story, trying to find the hidden door through which he was meant to walk. He had slowly come to discover that while Bethany was nothing if not circuitous, she was also oddly insightful.

He eyed her consideringly, but she wasn't looking at him. The gasoline gun _click_ed and she snapped it out of the first tank before striding three paces in order to fill up the second. "Perhaps," she said, as though it were some sort of comprehensible continuation of her original story, "perhaps I have faith because I never thought this world—this god, _my _God—would be, you know, just sunshine and puppies. I mean, He's a _loving _God, right? And love is never easy, or safe, or comfortable. It's—_dangerous_, and frightening, and unpredictable—but it's _good. _Isn't it?"

And then she did look at him, almost quizzically. She was _right, _of course—more right than her unexpectedly expansive human heart could comprehend—but he didn't understand her point. He kept his face very still, but perhaps she saw something in him that she recognized as a struggle to sift through her roundabout human approaches.

"Sometimes," she told him gently, "you have to tear something apart in order to put it back together the way it was meant to be."

He raised his head so she wouldn't see the confusion and doubt in his eyes. "You speak of humanity?" he asked doubtfully, and she eyed him with uncharacteristic shrewdness.

"Among other things," she replied.

**Word Count: 594  
>Completed: May 6<strong>**th****, 2011  
>Well. The next installment should be on Sunday, if all goes well, and will be two or three chapters long (I haven't decided yet). It's a big reveal, I guess (I'm pretty nervous). It might twist some accepted Legion-lore on its head, but I ask that you keep an open mind. :)<strong>

_**Here's the rough sketch/sneak-peak into Chapter 32 (simply copy & paste it into a browser address bar and remove the spaces). Thanks again to all the incredibly supportive reviewers!**_**  
>http : fyrefly-nyxa .deviantart .com /# /d3figm5 **

***Lazarusis the name of Jesus' friend, the brother of sisters Mary and Martha, who died before Jesus came to visit (though his sisters had sent word of his failing health). Jesus then went to the tomb where Lazarus had been laid for days and called out to him, whereupon the man rose from the dead. This chapter is meant to be evocative of resurrection, of rebuilding, of reconstructing. Interestingly, the town where Lazarus and his sisters lived was known as Bethany. [c. John 11]


	26. XX: Ash Wednesday

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XX: Ash Wednesday**  
>…<em>The Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted<em>_by Satan.  
>He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.<em>  
><strong>Mark 1: 12-13<strong>

"She's very beautiful, isn't she?" Bethany asked, entering the cool, blue-shadowed bedroom. Gabriel stood in the corner, watching over Joy while she slept. The teenager's dreams were troubled tonight, fitful. He had brushed his calloused fingers against her brow once, intending to soothe her, but her reaction to his touch had been violent, panicked. Now he stood back, keeping vigil, silent and more helpless than he'd felt in a very long time.

He was loath to admit it, but this teenaged girl was becoming very dear to him. He was sure, in that moment, that he loved her more than he had his own brother—at least in the end.

He turned his meteor-bright gaze on Bethany, but she had eyes only for her sister. She reached out with one infinitely gentle finger, running it between Joy's brows and down to the tip of her nose. In her sleep, the teenager stirred, and the crease in her forehead smoothed at her older sister's touch. He marveled at the ease with which Bethany had quieted the girl, especially when his own ministrations had failed.

"Here," Bethany whispered reverently when he didn't answer. She pressed her palm gently to her sister's forehead, brushing back Joy's glossy hair. "This is where I find God."

Everything in him tightened at her hushed words.

"Her smile is sacred to me. There is nothing holier in my life than this girl, Gabriel, and whenever I doubt—whenever faith seems far—I only have to look to my sister to remember how much God loves me: how blessed I am that He put her in my life."

For a moment, he longed again for his own brother, and wondered if he had _ever_ felt a fraction of the love for Michael that Bethany and Joy exuded, in every moment, for each other. A sense of loss pierced him, though he was uncertain that he'd ever had such a thing to lose.

_Perhaps once, _he thought. _Before—_

Watching the reverence with which she stroked her sister's brow, he could only remember dealing Michael's death-blow, the way it had felt—tragic but necessary—as the blade glided through. _I would not have shown you such mercy. _

"You asked once—what happened to her," she said softly in the darkness. "Do you remember?"

"Yes," he answered firmly, and waited.

"Last December," she said at last. "During the apocalypse—" She hesitated. "Do you remember how I said I couldn't survive losing her?" she asked, and her words spilled out in a rush. "And you asked what my wounds were—do you remember?"

So circuitous. "I do," he said only. There was a long, swollen silence, and he shifted restlessly, but didn't think she would continue. Then:

"—Gabriel?" Bethany asked quaveringly, and it sounded like a prayer in the darkness, something far more fragile than he'd grown to expect from her.

So he answered in kind, without even considering the ramifications. Turning to her directly, he took her hands in his own. "I am here," he assured her, his thunderous voice so gentle that it surprised even him.

**Word Count: 518  
>Completed: May 7<strong>**th****, 2011**  
>****According to Catholic (and many other Christian denomination) traditions, Ash Wednesdaysignifies the beginning of the Lenten season. It is 40 days long, intending to parallel the 40 days Jesus spend fasting in the desert, and the people who abide by this tradition generally sacrifice something during this season, a sort of symbolic fasting. Lent then concludes with the onset of the Tritium (Holy ThursdayThe Last Supper, Good Friday/The Crucifixion, and Holy Saturday/Easter Eve). It is generally a somber time, to be followed by a full season of great and joyful celebration and feasting, where followers are not even supposed to kneel in church because of their pure ecstasy and elevation in the Lord. [c. Matthew 4]


	27. XXI: The Fighter

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXI: The Fighter**  
><em>So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him,<br>he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.  
>Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."<br>The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,  
>because you have struggled with God and men and have overcome."<em>  
><strong>Genesis 32: 24-29<strong>

He peered into her ruined face. He was surprised by how precious it had become to him. The air-conditioning unit hummed to life, and the stars outside the window stabbed the sky, and she shivered in the manufactured breeze and warmed her palms between his.

"Her eyes turned black," Bethany said softly, and for a moment he didn't understand.

Then his skin tightened, and his bones grew heavy inside him, and his heart and stomach both caved in.

"I've never seen anyone move so fast," Bethany whispered. Her voice rustled in the shadows like ghosts, like fallen leaves. "She was too quick, and I couldn't stop her. She killed our parents, and the old woman who lived across the street, and two neighbor-kids on bikes—they were ten or twelve, I think; no older. The things she did to them—" She shivered again, and he realized it wasn't the cold. "She remembers most of it, in bits and pieces. She—I—"

He had never spared a thought for what might become of the humans possessed by the armies of heaven. He had perhaps assumed that they were all dead—even now he supposed it must be so for most of them. Surely their bodies no longer habitable, too broken and mangled and burned by the rigors of hosting an angel.

_But if one had managed to hold on—_

"She tried to execute you as well," he said softly, and the revelation burned through him. Brother against brother, sister against sister. He didn't know how he hadn't seen it from the beginning.

He didn't know how he had ever considered this battle justified.

"Yes," Bethany breathed. "Yes." It sounded like sudden relief, as though he had lifted some deep burden from her. "I wish she had tried sooner," the woman spilled out in a hushed whisper. "I don't know—what it was, or why, or how, but somehow, when we fought, I got the upper hand. I just—I hung on to her, as tightly as I could, all night. She was so—_feverish. _I had blisters all along my arms and chest, anywhere we touched. I thought she would die, certainly, or have brain damage from the heat of it—God, the way she _writhed—"_

Now he thought, and his wings shuddered just slightly behind him: _If one had managed to hold on—_

—_or to be held—_

He could see it clearly in his heart: the two sisters locked together, one tearing and thrashing while the other embraced her tightly, arms locked around arms, unflinching. He could almost hear Bethany's voice:

_Come back to me, Joy. Come home. _

And he understood, suddenly, what it must have cost her: to pull him from the desert, to anchor him with her body while he fought her in his sleep, fevered with dreams.

_You only save them because you can, _he heard Joy tell him. _Because a hero doesn't know how to do anything else. _

He thought perhaps it was the loneliest, saddest thing he'd ever heard.

"If I'd gotten to her sooner," Bethany whispered, "maybe I could have spared her some of that…death." The guilt in her voice speared him neatly between the ribs, and if he hadn't been so focused on the feel of her hands in his, he might have staggered. "Gabriel—I was so tired and sore by the end of it," she said brokenly, and the words were a breathless, wounded confession, a raw scar hidden in the dark. He watched her eyebrows as they furrowed and curved upward; agonized, but she forced herself on. "I was—so _weak." _

The disgust and recrimination in her voice tore at him; the tendons in his wings ached with the heaviness of it.

"It went on for—hours and hours—and hours." A sob caught in her throat. "Everything in me hurt. I didn't think—I could hold on any longer? I was so afraid—not that she would kill me, but that I would…give up on her." Her hands turned in his, holding onto his wrists now, which were too large for her fingers to span. Urgently, she said, "We can't give up on the things we love, Gabriel. _Nothing _is more certain to destroy us." A faint, self-mocking smile flickered briefly at the corner of her mouth. "Not even angels."

And he found himself thinking of Michael. _I gave Him what He needed._  
>And himself: <em>I would not have shown you such mercy.<em>  
>And Bethany, just a few short hours ago, with her voice so wry he felt parched just imagining it:<p>

_I'm pretty good at hanging on to things._

_Father! _his soul cried out, as lost and abandoned as that holy Child's, cradled protectively in its mother's arms.

"Just when I thought—_this is it—_and I was thanking _God_ that she would kill me, because I couldn't live with—_I couldn't live—_just then, her eyes cleared…and she started _screaming_." She shuddered so convulsively that it raced the entirety of her frame, right down into her fingertips, folded around his wrists. He watched as her whole body was wracked with it. "She couldn't—_stop_. At all. It went on…so long. Far longer than the—than the fight itself. It went on forever. I _never_—" She shuddered again, her muscles so brittle he thought they might break, and she looked up, met his gaze squarely. _"I never want to hear that sound again."_

He stepped backward and stared down at her, voiceless. He pulled her hands from his wrists, holding her slender palms against his armored chest because he couldn't think of what else to do with them—they were as fragile as birds, and trembling. "Did you know what it was?" he managed at last, though the words were strangely strangled. "Inside her." It was not in his nature to hide things, but he thought—he would have liked to spare her the knowledge.

And spare himself.

Her eyelids fluttered closed slowly. _"She _did," she said softly. "She told me. Later. When she could speak again. What it felt like, shoving itself under her skin. All the—the _holy fire, _she called it, and how it filled her, packed inside so tightly she thought her body would split open and boil." She shivered again: a small one this time, but somehow even more haunted, and she seemed more fragile than anything he'd ever known. "She said it recited back to her—her every sin. Her every wrong choice. Everything that has ever haunted her, and more. She said—it knew her _name_."

And the echo of Bethany's voice in his memory, colder than he'd ever heard it before or since:_  
>Something definitely crawled up inside her where it didn't belong.<em>

"Gabriel," she said suddenly—"you're hurting me."

He looked down at their joined hands pressed against his armor, and her fingers were clenched whitely between his own. He released her as quickly as if he'd been scalded, staring at his own hands and the damage they'd wrought. His stomach clenched; he turned abruptly, one hand braced against the wall and the other pressed into his abdomen like a fist.

He hadn't eaten since he'd been Home, so when his body heaved—again and again—it was only slick bitterness that filled his mouth.

**Word Count: 1,220  
>Completed: May 7<strong>**th****, 2011**  
>****This title goes hand-in-hand with the bible verse accompanying it, in which is about how Jacob, one of the forefathers of the Jewish nation, wrestled with an unnamed, unearthly man for a full night, and won. Scholars debate whether this man was an angel of the Lord or God Himself. Most seem to assume the former, though the (rather ambiguous) text may imply the latter. [c. Genesis 32]<p> 


	28. XXII: Mark of Cain

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXII: Mark of Cain**  
><em>The Lord said, "What have you done? Listen!<br>Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground."_  
><strong>Genesis 4: 10<strong>

The next morning, after seeing the untouched remains of Joy's abandoned breakfast, he found her sitting out at the edge of the dusty road. Her legs sprawled limply in the sand.

"Don't look at me," she told him dully.

He hesitated, then crouched at her side, watching as she drew patterns in the grit with a dried, slender branch. For long moments, they sat in silence. He felt the tension around her, thicker than he ever remembered, more tightly-coiled—more nervous and cringing.

"Joy," he said quietly, though he was certain he hadn't the right. "I had thought you no longer feared me."

She kept her gaze averted. "I don't," she said. "But I didn't want you to know."

Carefully, she placed her stick to one side, then turned her gaze out to the horizon. He followed the direction of her eyes, content to stare at nothing alongside her if this was her will.

"I killed them," she said at last. "Our parents. Those two little boys. That sweet old lady." She paused. "I almost killed Beth."

"Joy," he beckoned softly. "Joy, that creature was not you."

She looked at him then, her eyes surprised at his denial. "Forgiveness, Gabe?" she asked softly. "You love my sister."

He held her gaze steadily. "As I love you."

Her lip quirked in a ghost of a smile. "Not _quite_ as you love me." He had no time to puzzle over this—she had reached for him, her beringed fingers tracing a line down the right side of his face. He stilled at her touch: very different from her sister's, but just as strangely sweet. "That scar on her face?" Joy whispered. "I gave her that." A pause. "Did she tell you?"

He was silent.

"Of course she didn't," Joy answered for him. "She wouldn't—shame me like that. But I remember it, Gabe. Every time I look at her, I see—what it meant to do to her. What _I_ would have done to her. Gabe"—her fingers curled in fistfuls of her own wheat-pale hair—"_it never goes away."_

He remembered how it had felt to kill Michael, like the splitting of his own heart. He had wept as he had done it, had he not? In this moment, he felt it again: a ripping inside, a gaping wound. He thought—if he had known her _before—_he might never have been able to do this thing, to lead the legions of God on a war campaign against humanity.

Her eyes—darker than her sister's, more bitter and prone to angry tears—stared into his face, searching as though to discover his true intentions. And then, frantically, she burst out,

"_Please _don't tell her—please, Gabriel, don't—I don't want her to know—"

He reached for her instinctively, and was surprised when she didn't pull away but let him grip her shoulders gently. "What, child? What am I not to tell her?"

"I _know,"_ Joy said. "I know why the angel chose me—how it got inside." Her voice rippled pleadingly. "I know it's because I'm weak."

He stared at her, dismay painting itself across his stoic features. "Joy—"

"I _know_, Gabriel. I know _everything_ that went through its head. I saw it all. And I know it was my fault that it could take me, and that's why it's my fault they're dead, and _that's how I killed them_. And I don't want her to know that I—I don't want her to think of me that way, Gabriel. _Please."_

_I am here to watch over you,_ he had told her once. And what was it she'd said, frightened and oh—he realized now—so very brave?

_I didn't think angels did that kind of thing anymore—not unless it was to point out your every sin._

He thought he might be sick again. The muscles in his throat worked rebelliously; he tipped his head to the heavens, trying to fight back the reflex.

"I will not," he said at last. "I will not tell her. But Joy…I do not think there is anything in all of Heaven or earth that could convince your sister that you are in any way less than perfect, or less precious."

"I—thank you, Gabe," she said, and all the tension went out of her bones. She sagged beside him, held up by his hands on her shoulders. "Thank you. Thank you." Tears had spilled over her cheeks; he wondered how he had not noticed them before. Her lips pressed together and he recognized that look from a hundred prophets gone before: he knew, if he let her, she would be kissing his knuckles right now.

Unlike all the times in the past, it humbled him now. _Shamed_ him. His mouth was so dry he could barely speak. "I...am sorry," he said. His voice rumbled and broke, cracking like thunder on the horizon, with no hope for rain. "Joy, the words mean nothing, but I am sorry." _I am sorry I did this thing, _he thought, and for the first time the apology had nothing to do with his Father. It had nothing to do with obedience and adoration; it was simply sorrow for sorrow's sake, for the havoc he had wrecked on these two small and precious lives.

"Beth," she said after a moment, her voice hesitant and tremulous, an offering she still wasn't sure he'd accept, "Beth always says we do what we think we have to. To survive."

And he remembered the raw pink line, bisecting one side of Bethany's brow and cheek, the way Bethany had touched it reverently. _I could survive many things, _she'd said. _Not one of them includes losing her. _And he understood, in those words, the truth she'd given him—how much bravery it must have taken her, how determined and courageous a heart she must have had: to tear him from the desert, to watch over him in the night, to mend his open wound and send him out into the street to talk to her sister and invite her in for frozen pizza.

Perhaps humans possessed a bottomless capacity for depravity and evil, but in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—their capacity for grace was even more astounding.

And grace was exactly what Joy was offering him now.

His heart shifted in his chest at her words. For the first time in centuries—in millennia—he was utterly moved, almost beside himself. She must have seen it in his eyes. She slid from his grasp and leaned in against his side. And when she wept like a child, she let him hold her, and he thought it to be the most unbearably bittersweet gift he'd ever been offered from anyone other than God.

**Word Count: 1,134  
>Completed: May 7<strong>**th****, 2011  
>Whew. I feel wrung out.<br>I wrote the foundations and first drafts for these three chapters while listening to **_**Have Faith In Me **_**by A Day to Remember. Just saying. I kind of imagine it in the context of Bethany to her sister on the night of Armageddon.**  
>****Most people think the Mark of Cain refers to part of Cain's punishment—that he underwent some physical disfigurement (or scar) for killing his brother (Abel), which set him apart from humanity as a whole and isolated him as a murderer. In fact, however, Cain's punishment was essentially an inability to cultivate crops (it was withholding his own harvest that led to Cain's greater sin, after all) and, by extension, a generation sentence of being a "wanderer" (presumably, a hunter-gatherer), or someone with no home. Interestingly, the Mark of Cain was actually a mark of protection God placed on him, so that he would <em>not <em>be targeted for violence by other people who already knew of his crime.

So. Who is Cain in this story? Who is Abel? And who bears the Mark? [c. Genesis 4]


	29. XXIII: Salvage

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXIII: Salvage**  
><em>Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts:<br>Be strong, do not fear; your God will come; he will come with vengeance;  
>with divine retribution he will come to save you.<em>  
><strong>Isaiah 35: 3-4<strong>  
><em>For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;<br>they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone._  
><strong>Psalm 91: 11-12<strong>

"I'm glad you're here to look after her," Bethany confided one afternoon. "I worry about her."

Baby's back tire had blown, and Gabriel was stoically lifting the side of the truck with one hand so Bethany could change it. Her hands looked very fragile against the tire iron. On the other side of the road, Joy stared into the distance, her eyes unblinking, her mouth a hard line. Gabriel's gaze flickered back and forth between the two sisters. He'd been holding on tight to the knowledge of Joy's possession, clutching it stoically in the dark recesses of his heart. His own role in their private tragedy had once seemed so removed; now it was strangely and painfully personal. He'd expended considerable effort in his moments of solitude, trying to fold it tightly into a secret place in his heart, next to a hundred other secret and unacknowledged wounds.

Perhaps, he realized moodily, this was why Bethany had given him these words now, like a gift. While the secret places inside his heart clamored that _he did not deserve such praise_, he nevertheless felt something unfurl inside himself at the gentle honor she had paid him.

"She has so much pain," the older sister said softly. "And she needs"—she touched the place where her scar ended, just below her chin, with something like regret or doubt—"she needs someone besides me, I know. And you—well, Gabriel, I don't think there is anyone who could be better for her. Stronger, kinder. More patient."

The warring sides of his heart both clung to and rebelled at her words, and Gabriel allowed his brow to furrow. He had been coming to realize that the scar was only a shallow wound. All that went with it—all the things left unsaid—had clearly cut Bethany open, and these hidden wounds were far worse. _You can only tell someone you forgive them so many times, _she had told him later, her eyes—for just a moment—utterly broken. _Or tell them that there is nothing to forgive. Sooner or later, hearing it said—it only hurts them more._

And then, haunted and hunted and as still as a small mammal in the sights of a predator: _Sometimes, _Bethany had breathed, _she can't bear to look at me._

And so the rift, which ran deeper and more painfully than any scar, lay between the sisters much like the wound on Bethany's face: kept clean of infection, but unstitched and unmended, healing slowly and painfully on its own. The edges had peeled back, and everything underneath seemed so exposed and vulnerable.

_Michael, _he thought, and he wasn't sure if the name brought with it anger or anguish.

"You don't?" he asked. _You don't have pain?_ He knew she did—knew it by the way he saw her hands linger on her sister's brow, the hidden sadness at the corner of her mouth, the strange and bitter urge he had to take all these sweet small pieces of her in his arms and carefully try to put them back together.

He looked down at his mace-calloused hand, gripping the edge of the truck. He did not think he was capable of such a delicate thing, but oh, he ached to try.

She smiled at the rusting wheel-well, then at up at him. "It's different for me."

"Her pain _is _your pain."

She looked up at him. He made a dark shadow against the sun, his wings arched and formidable, but she heard something vulnerable in his voice, something sad, and it was similar to the sorrow he showed when he spoke fleetingly of his Father, or his brother.

He had lost his dearest sibling, while she had held on to hers.

"Oh," she said softly, achingly. "Gabriel."

He turned away, training his eyes instead on Joy, whose hair fluttered in the stale desert breeze, whose eyes did not blink.

She braced her hands on the tire and rose. "It's different for me," she repeated, dusting herself off as he gently lowered the vehicle. She moved to stand next to him to watch Joy, and she gently bumped her shoulder against his bicep. This time, she didn't move away, leaning against him instead. He found her nearness and warmth strangely perturbing and for a moment, he could not focus on her words at all. "I don't turn away from the world. I find my safety in turning towardit."

"You have proven yourself selfless," he said tonelessly, his eyes still on Joy, though his attention had been caught and held by the roundness of her shoulder against him. Bethany didn't know if he saw her sister, or his own brother, standing there at the edge of the road. "You are—merciful." He seemed to choke on the word. "I confess," he added quietly, "that I covet your…benevolence."

How lost he was. How abandoned. And she thought it was staggering and sad that he didn't seem to understand the thing which had been apparent to her from almost the beginning.

"Well, selflessness or selfishness: who can say?" Her shoulder moved gently against him as she shrugged again. "Aren't they the same thing?" To this day, she couldn't say if she had saved her sister out of altruism, or out a deep and abiding need to keep Joy in her own life.

He didn't answer. She thought of herself, and him, and her sister and his brother, and what it meant to be benevolent, to be strong, to be merciful. She turned toward him—reached down and took his hand in hers, ignoring his jolt at the contact. With one hand she cradled his, ignoring the grease beneath her fingernails and his own shocking and immaculate cleanness. With the other, her fingers traced the sinew and tendons in his hand. His hand was made for gripping a mace, for meting out holy justice. She flattened her palm to his, lifted it between them.

She peered up at him between their splayed fingers.

"Gabriel," she asked, "which of us is stronger?"

"I am," he said automatically. But then his brow furrowed in confusion, and his soft mouth curved into an even more-prominent frown. "You are," he corrected himself, and the words were very quiet and certain.

She sucked in a breath. She had hoped to make a point about different kinds of strength, and different kinds of selflessness, but now—in the wake of his unexpected admiration—she found herself confused and conflicted. "You think so?"

He nodded once, firmly. "Yes."

She groped with the sudden uncertainty of the honor he had bestowed on her. "I'm very easily wounded, Gabriel," she protested softly, confused.

With his free hand he pressed one finger very gently to the place where her scar began, where the gouge ran deepest and reddest. She closed her eyes at the unexpectedness of his touch, and the warmth of it, and the tenderness. He watched, and curved his palm to rest along her temple and cheek, and he thought of human sin, and human grace, and human fragility, and human courage. He thought of Bethany pulling her sister out from the darkest night and into the dawn, and he thought of Joy holding her hand out to him and saying, _We're family now._

"Yes, you are easily wounded," he agreed readily, and she heard something that sounded lost in his tone. "I believe that this is what makes you strong."

She opened her eyes, penny-bright and glossy, and leaned into his hand against her better judgment. "We're the same, Gabriel," she said gently, a little desperately, a little needily, as though she were clutching to believe it, as though it would make her feel less alone. "We're the same."

"Are you two _finally_ ready?" Joy interrupted, not batting an eye at their joined hands, or the way her sister was leaning into the angel as though pulled there by gravity. Bethany reared back, and Gabriel let his hands slowly fall away.

"Yeah," Bethany said. "Yeah."

"Well, good," the teenager said, and there was a teasing and entirely-too-pleased glint in her eye. "It's about time."

Neither Bethany nor Gabriel was entirely sure what she was referring to, but they didn't think it was the changed tire.

**Word Count: 1,374  
>Completed: May 10<strong>**th****, 2011  
>This was a difficult chapter, because it's kind of a bridge. I had to move our characters from the aftermath of the revelation into the next scene. I am also trying to develop an atmosphere where Gabriel's own sorrows can be explored a little more in-depth. Unfortunately, I probably have not done as good a job as I would have liked when it comes to focusing on the reasons why Gabriel is like he is. There are really only two chapters that explore this issue explicitly (Interlude Seven, coming up shortly, and Chapter 32). However, as usual, I am trying to pour a foundation for this exploration so that you're at least peripherally aware of some of his, uh, dysfunction, and so that if you ever choose to reread the fanfiction you will notice little vague "hints" that suddenly make more sense. As a bit of a prompt, note that Gabriel thinks a few times about his relationship with Michael "before." I assume (it was intended) that most of you read this as <strong>_**before Gabe killed him, **_**or **_**before Michael fell.**_** But they've been brothers a very long time, you know. The destruction of a bond like that doesn't happen overnight.  
>Anyway, I hope this chapter was not too awkward or stilted, and that the little bit of levity at the end made you smile. :)<strong>

**** "Salvage" is only a variation on the word _salvation _or _save, _and can be used as a noun or a verb. What do you think this title means? Of course, _I _was only referring to them saving the truck. :)


	30. Interlude VI: Matins

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Interlude: Matins**_  
>Awake, my soul! Awake, my harp and lyre!<br>I will awaken the dawn._**  
>Psalm 57:8<strong>_  
>The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders;<br>where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy._**  
>Psalm 65:8<strong>

Afternoons of driving and flight led to lazy evenings in dusky light, and though the desert seemed unbearably barren to Gabriel, he had grown to appreciate its painted purple shadows, the blue light on Bethany's face, the sharp stars like the glinting points of a thousand burning swords. Sunsets in aqua and lime and rose melted into an endless number of rooftop conversations and Bethany's low, smoky voice, which alternately chattered at him playfully or grew soft and confiding as a flower. Sooner or later, she would creep away to bed, where she slept with Joy. Sometimes he would stay on the eaves, listening to the sound of his own breathing, the steady thud of his heart in his chest.

Each breath, each ebb and flow of the holy fire in his veins, seemed to him like a prayer.

But other times he would linger in the hallway outside whichever room they decided to sleep in, his wings confined, his face constricted with a steady and claustrophobic unease. He had been created _large, _and meant for open skies and bright wildernesses; the narrowness of these human corridors strained him. Still, some nights, he could not bring himself to leave, focusing instead on heartbeats and breathing patterns that were not his own.

When the morning came, though—when he felt Bethany's pulse quicken, her muscles stretch—he took to the skies for his morning prayers. Cut off from heaven, abandoned by his Father, Gabriel was still determined to not abandon _Him. _Psalms and sacred devotions poured from his lips in the private, holy places between a stark bruise-colored sky and the cold blue heights of invisible stars. It was not until later, usually, that he rejoined the sisters, generally after Joy finally woke and ate her breakfast and was perched at the side of the road, where he was drawn inevitably to her side.

But this day, he left early, missing his Father with a blind desperation, eager to recapture some semblance of the intimacy he so craved. Though Father seemed unresponsive, Gabriel's morning hosannas at least left _him _feeling more at ease, if still vaguely melancholic and hollow.

Having left early, he returned early, and he heard laughter, and was suddenly—surprisingly—saddened to find he'd missed the source of it. He rounded the corner, and there they were: breakfast outside this morning, canned fruit left half-eaten in cracked bowls on the patio furniture, most of which looked partially broken. For a moment, it overwhelmed him: this little dying garden, with overturned potted succulents and lopsided furniture, sunbleached cushions, the cracked stepping stones and straggling coarse desert-grasses. And amidst the blanched, bleak scene: two sisters, laughing, playing catch with an old baseball.

"You suck!" Joy crowed when Bethany's throw went wild.

"_You _suck," her sister called back, sticking out her tongue. "I'm trying to teach you how to dive for it!"

"Right," the younger girl snickered. He folded his wings slowly, but the feathers clicked and chimed against each other like small knives, and both sisters paused to glance at him, Joy raising one hand in a carefree, wholehearted wave.

Her smile was reckless, abandoned, free-spirited—something rare, and so precious that his breath grew still in his lungs. He realized abruptly that she was gleaming: her throat was bedecked with glittering costume jewelry, which caught and reflected the harsh desert sunlight into a million softly-colored shadows on her face, the vulnerable underside of her chin. He had known Joy was partial to ornamentation—her fingers were always shining with metal rings on almost every finger—but he had not seen such garish overindulgence on her before. Bethany, too, had a filmy floral scarf wrapped around her neck, and in the growing heat of the morning she had discarded her fraying sweatshirt. The muscles in her arms were long and lean, and they moved smoothly under skin that he thought might burn easily in the sun. A rogue breeze, hot and dusty, skittered through the air, lifting the long trailing ends of the scarf and winding it through the fluttering burnt-gold banner of her hair.

He stood in silence, soaking in their banter, their called nicknames and playful insults, the steady _thwack _of the ball—which appeared to be scribbled with signatures—into their mitts. The sun grew higher, and air grew dryer, and the girls finally stopped with laughter still scribbled on their shining, smiling faces.

"We found an extra mitt," Joy told him as they converged on him, still grinning, bumping hips with each other. He marveled at how in tandem they seemed sometimes, how at ease with each other as long as they weren't wrapped in their individual and complementary sorrows.

"I did not know that you had a mitt in the first place," he admitted, and Bethany grinned.

"Gabriel, we have a _treasure chest,"_ she said, and her eyes sparkled like new pennies and amber suns. And then the sisters showed him where it was buried—a medium-sized decorative trunk made from something like papier-maché or cardboard, which had been lodged tightly on the floor of the backseat of the truck, underneath their small spare suitcases and a modest pile of blankets. In it were two more scarves, and yet more jewelry; a bottle of something called _Old Spice _(and it did, Gabriel acknowledged, look old), a small box of baseball cards, some books and postcards and photographs.

"We brought these from home," Joy explained after a moment, touching the scarves lingeringly. "They were…"

"All the things we couldn't bear to part with," Bethany finished for her sister, still smiling. "These scarves are our mother's. Some of the jewelry, too, though the tackier stuff is from when we were kids."

"These baseball cards I collected all through second grade," Joy confided. "I had a teacher—she was my favorite—who gave us one with every good grade we got."

"The ball and mitt were our dad's," Bethany added, her fingers caressing the frayed stitches of the ball still held in her hands. "Both autographed, you know. He didn't actually care about them too much, but he kept them on his desk because we thought they were the _coolest things ever._"

When he touched the edges of the photos, he grew very still. There, on top, a picture taken within the year, and he almost didn't recognize the people in it at first. Unshadowed, unscarred, shining-eyed: two sisters, clearly awake and enraptured with life. From the angle, he supposed that Joy had climbed on her sister's back, though she was clearly too old to be carried. There was so much laughter in them; they were ruddy-cheeked and almost tearful with their mirth. He had often, now, thought them each surprisingly and ineffably beautiful, but in this relic of the past he saw an innocence and hope that made his heart break open and weep inside.

Without thinking, he touched the photo, his finger pressing gently against Bethany's whole and unhurt face.

"It's a good one of her," Joy agreed with a reckless little smile, which he suddenly realized was only a shadow of its former glory. "You can keep it, if you want." There was something teasing in her voice, and he cast a questioning glance at Bethany, but she was busy trying to tug the trunk from the place where it was wedged. "Go on," Joy said lightly, and he hesitated before tucking it inside the edge of his chestplate. It seemed to warm against his skin, and offer his heart some piece of contentment, though he could not say why it was so.

_A talisman, _he thought only. _A holy relic._

And then the trunk popped out, and Bethany stumbled, and Joy laughed at her, and together they showed him a chipped teacup, and they told him laughing stories of each photograph, a small unidentifiable stuffed animal, each book and what it meant (_The Cricket in Times Square, _and _Maniac Magee, _ and _Skellig _and _Stargirl_ and _The Two Princesses of Bamarre_) and a small gold necklace with a tiny shining dove on it. There was a dyed feather from a plastic "dress-up shoe" from when they were children, a little cracked clay bowl full of plastic gems, ticket stubs to a Red Wings game with which they had surprised their father (driving all day and night in order to see it), and an old locked diary covered in stickers.

And there was something else there, too, hidden in the sweet-smelling recesses of the box, which seemed too small to hold all these strangely beautiful and wondrous things. It was invisible, and unnameable, and the sisters didn't seem to know it was there, but Gabriel could pick up the faint comforting fragrance of it, and oh, he could _feel _it. It was in the bright and holy and sacred way they shared each thing with him, the way they handled each one lovingly and gave it to him, trusting him with their stories and their memories, with the fragile remembered delight that clung to their hearts and eyes like little ghosts.

And even if he couldn't name it, he still understood it, this last remaining thing in the box: something like hope, like devotion, like adoration; something like morning prayers, and coming home.

**Word Count: 1,547  
>Completed: May 12<strong>**th****, 2011  
>A little bit of sweetness &amp; light to last you through the weekend. I am going to visit my <strong>_**own **_**sisters tomorrow afternoon and Saturday, and I look forward to it so much. I am bringing home all sorts of colored chalk, and scrapbooking stuff, and we will frolic and blow bubbles and fly kites. Maybe. It depends on the weather.  
>Writing this makes me suddenly realize how very much of my relationship with my little sisters has suffused this fanfiction, especially in this chapter.<strong>

**The next installment is going to be the longest—and probably most confusing—chapter so far. It's drabbles upon drabbles, flashbacks upon flashbacks. I hope it is some measure of coherent. PREPARE YOURSELVES. :)  
><strong>

**Also: each of the books listed here was chosen for a specific reason, many of them symbolic.**_**  
>The Two Princesses of Bamarre, <strong>_**by Gail Carson Levine, **is about two sisters: a brave older sister and a shy, frightened younger one, and essentially: how they both take care of each other._**  
>Skellig,<strong>_** by David Almond, **is about a boy who discovers an "owl-man" in an abandoned garage. The owl-man is in need of caretaking; meanwhile, the boy's baby sister is also frighteningly ill. The book touches along themes and questions of freedom._**  
>Maniac Magee, <strong>_**by Jerry Spinelli, **was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. It is about a boy whose parents die. He then runs away and sets off essentially across the country, playing baseball and making friends and overcoming prejudice._**  
>Stargirl, <strong>_**also by Spinelli, **is about a "new girl" in a desert high school who shakes the world with her nonconformity and unexpected authenticity and friendship.  
>…<strong>I was going to say that <strong>_**The Cricket in Times Square **_**(by George Seldon) **was the only book that I chose based entirely on personal whimsy (it was a book my mother read to me when I was a child, and which I in turn read to my sisters) but I realize now that this isn't entirely true. I also read _Maniac _to my sisters before bed, and _The Two Princesses _was a gift to my oldest-younger sister, Lisa, while _Stargirl _was given to Valerie and _Skellig _to Rosie (and yes, for those of you who read my Octoberverse, there are some very strong parallels). So, while unintentional, I suppose all of these books have deep personal meaning as well.

****_Matins _refers to the first canonical hour, which generally occurs at daybreak. As a daily prayer service, it often is scheduled for 3:00am. It is generally comprised of psalms and hymns, and I love the idea of Gabriel singing his prayers lowly in the first stretches of dawn.


	31. Interlude VII: In the Beginning

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Interlude: In the Beginning**_  
>As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones<br>in whom is all my delight._**  
>Psalm 16:3<strong>

_It is hard to say "when they were young," because angels by their very nature exist just the other side of time. But once, when Gabriel and Michael and Sammael were all new—the closest brothers among the five archangels—they stood on the fiery, singing stones at the edge of heaven like sentries, and never dreamed that one day those gates would be closed to any of them._

"_Look at all He has made," Michael marveled, peering into the vast cauldron of glowing dust and stars. "Light, and land, and sea. Stars. Now, living things: plants, animals. Each thing is more beautiful than the last."_

"_Will it always be so?" Gabriel asked them. He admitted privately that Father's gifts were fascinating and lovely, but they all paled in comparison to Father Himself, to the wild glory that suffused every particle of heaven. Gabriel doubted that anything could be so dangerous and glorious and generous—that anything could ever even come close._

"_Fear not, little brother," Sammael chuckled. "We will always be His favorite creations, cut and fashioned from holy fire and eyes in His divine imagination and grace."_

"_You say that because you are secure in the knowledge that you are His most-favored son," Michael said drily, but he seemed amused._

_Sammael smile widely, a broad grin that filled his face with holy light and warmth, like a star caught in the first golden rays of dawn. "It is so," he agreed, and laughed. The sound—joyful, free, unhindered—brought answering smiles from the faces of the other angels who heard it. Even Gabriel felt his mouth curve in response. Though he had ever been the solemn brother—compared to Michael's compassionate mercy and Sammael's unrestrained joy—he understood why his brother had always been the favorite of Father's, why he was in fact the favorite of all the seraphim._

_Wherever Sammael went, he brought with him light._

**oOo**

It had always been so: these three. Raphael was the softest of the five archangels, the most tender-hearted, and though he was well-loved he seemed to prefer quiet tendernesses and the company of Father's animals, the stroke of his hand on the head of a doe rather than the blunt camaraderie of his brothers. Uriel was not precisely _sullen, _but he had a tendency to withdraw as well, preferring the solitude of deep thoughts to the company of angels and beasts. Raphael was a warrior-healer, and Uriel was a master of strategy, but it was the other three who had bound themselves most closely to each other: who reveled in their brotherhood as messengers, as generals of the armies of God.

Even the other seraphim remarked on the easiness of their fraternity, especially among creatures so different. Gabriel trusted these two more than anyone except Father Himself, and if Sammael showed his love in lighthearted jests and contagious laughter—if Michael expressed it in through earnest conversation and heartfelt, insightful kindnesses—then Gabriel hoped he had managed to convey his own devotion through his steadfast loyalty, his constant presence and silent support, his appreciation of all their antics.

His love for his brothers was something solemn and sacred, resting deep in the roots of his heart and his wings. He felt it always, but most keenly when they flew together, when they raced together, when they competed in daring feats and he found himself _laughing, _almost against his will.

Later, centuries after the Fall, when he realized how much he'd lost, Gabriel would blame Sammael with hushed ferocity. Fiercely, under his breath, he would say, _I have not lost one brother but two. _Though he had always craved the company of his more light-hearted brethren before, he now found himself clutching almost greedily at his isolation, as though it were a comfort. He would tell himself in the stolen and carefully-guarded moments of isolation that when Sammael had left—had betrayed Father, had betrayed them _all_—he'd taken with him something vital, something which had allowed Gabriel and Michael to exist in complete ease and harmony.

It was not precisely true, though. Rather, it was as though the favored brother's departure had instead left a ragged wound between the two, a hungry and bloody hole in their fraternal trinity. In Gabriel's heart, there was a sense of quiet unease that their brotherhood had been so easily disrupted, their trust betrayed—and Michael, who did not know how to fix this devastating heart-wound in his favorite brother, had simply tried to work around it.

There is no way, however, to avoid a canyon.  
>You must climb down into it, and come up the other side.<p>

**oOo**

"_I do not understand," Sammael half-snarled. _

_Gabriel stared. He had never seen his brother like this before: teeth gritted, hands clenching, high color in his cheekbones and something of ugliness around his eyes. For a moment, Gabriel did not recognize him._

"_I do not_ understand,"_ Sammael repeated, and Gabriel could tell he was _trying_—desperately. "They are weak. Not only in flesh, but in spirit. They have no constancy—no devotion!" He bared white teeth at his Father, who was still and calm upon His throne._"Half_ of them only praise You when they are pleased; the other half only acknowledge You when they want to complain!" His voice grew agonized. "You tell them again and again that_ You love them,_ and they respond by asking for more, greedy as a starving animal who gorges itself to death."_

"_Sammael—" Raphael tried to interrupt, to diffuse Sammael's growing ire._

"_No, brother! Let me speak." The archangel's beautiful face twisted. "These—_people_—will be easily turned against each other. They'll be easily turned against You." He gripped his morning star furiously in one hand; the weighted weapon swung on its bright chain. His lip curled. "You've crafted a cannibal, a flesh-eating_ virus; _you've created a creature that will_ destroy _itself."_

**We shall see, **_Father said only, soothingly. _

_The quietness of His response seemed to spur Sammael on further._ "I could forgive You for that," the _archangel snarled, "but not for abandoning_ us _to grant_ them_ Your favor!"_

_Gabriel sucked in a breath, and Michael tensed beside him. The idea of _forgiving_ their Father, who had created them in purest love and kindness, seemed a sin of pride too great to bear. For the first time since they had been created, Gabriel felt a wild surge of anger for his brother. How dare he speak so to the One who had given them such beautiful gifts—including Life itself?_

_But Father did not acknowledge the profanity; instead He said, _**My son—My dearest Sammael—I will **_**never**_** abandon you. I do not love you less, My child: only, I have still more love yet to give.**

"_And it goes to_ them_," Sammael spat in disgust. "While we who have served You faithfully—who sing Your praises with our every breath and movement, who adore You with every flicker of holy fire within us—we are made to _serve_ them, to be the stones they step on that they might reach You. We who love You!" Sammael cried out, and his voice was an anguished accusation._

**You may not understand now, Sammael, but in their very simplicity lies complexity, and in their freedom lies true devotion. They possess an unparalleled depth and potential—and if you are patient with them, you will come to love them. It is inevitable.**_ Father smiled: an invitation. _**They are My crowning glory, Sammael, and My greatest joy. I wish you to share in this happiness with Me.**

"_You say I do not understand yet," Sammael said through clenched teeth. "Then _explain Yourself to me, Father."

_Gabriel's eyes darted back to his Father, who suddenly seemed very still, and very, very dangerous._

_Quietly, He said: _**I will not.**

"Explain!"_ Sammael bellowed._

"_Father," said Azazel from the side, his hands raised in a placating gesture as he stepped tentatively to Sammael's side. "My brother only asks what we all wish to know. Please. We know Your love is limitless and Your plan is perfect, but we are small and seek only to understand. We would be happy to commit to Your will if only we knew_ why_ You would ask this of us—why You require that we debase ourselves as Your divine children."_

_One by one, other angels stepped forward: tentative, or ashamed. Gabriel's heart sunk as yet another of his brothers slowly stood before their Father, defying Him, rejecting Him—and another, and another. Together, it seemed their strength and arrogance grew, until they stood smugly, stonily, looking—_entitled_._

Baraquiel, Yomiel, Adirael, _Gabriel lamented, and each of his angry brethren was a stone in his heart. Each step forward by one of his brothers was another betrayal that tore through him, and imagining how it must seem to Father—who had lovingly formed them each from holy fire and the elements, who had created them each uniquely, with hidden strengths and subtle flaws, with beauty and precision—imagining how it must _feel_, to have His children turn against him…it made Gabriel's stomach turn and clench. _Tamiel, Shamsiel….

"_Please, Father," Azazel said quietly. "We only ask that, as a display of Your love for us, You enlighten us."_

**I will not,**_ He repeated, and though His voice was calm, something beneath it was terrifying, and full of awful power. Then, sharply, and with something of wild ferocity under the words:_ **I am a **_**loving God**_**. I am **_**not**_** a caged lion.**

"Fine,"_ Sammael hissed from his place at the front of the crowd. Legions of wings shuddered and rippled in unison, rustling like a forest of soft leaves and sharp daggers. "I will_ show_ You then—what they_ really_ are. What atrocities You've _created."

**oOo**

The wound grew, as all wounds do when left unattended and unacknowledged by those we love.  
><em>If Sammael could betray us—betray Father—any member of our legions might.<br>If Sammael could do such a thing, so might Michael._

_So might I._

And so, with the same devotion and efficiency with which he carried out every task, Gabriel set about killing his heart.

Who could say when it started? Perhaps in that moment when, side by side in their last instance of true brotherly camaraderie, they knelt at Father's feet. Michael, perhaps, had been pledging to love humanity, but Gabriel had only been pledging his love for God: a misunderstanding, a simple ambiguity in semantics. Perhaps it was before that, when Sammael had leapt from the Singing Stones without even a backward glance to spare the two of them—or even earlier, when the first talking monkey was sculpted out of dust and ashes.

At first Gabriel would think it was only mourning—for Sammael, for his other fallen brethren—that so plagued his heart. He blamed this sadness, in Michael as well as himself, for their inability to find as much joy in each other as they had once before. But in time, this excuse no longer served, and he found himself gazing on Michael's acts of warrior-mercy and stoic compassion with a stony disapproval. In Michael's tendency to indulge these whims, in his eagerness to salvage even one lost human soul despite all odds—Gabriel saw a dangerous quality, one which he was certain could lead to another betrayal.

"Guard your actions," he told his brother once, sternly and in privacy. Michael had looked momentarily stunned.

"Brother," Michael had said, and there had been something so _certain _in his voice, despite his weak and willful behavior—"Do you think I would wrong our Father?"

Gabriel hadn't spared him a glance. "Stranger things have happened," he said only, darkly, before casting an implacable sideways stare at his brother. "I would not see you wound Him," he elaborated after a moment, the words clipped and rumbling. He paused, and then added—his voice low and just a little bit aching—"I would not lose _you_, either."

"Brother," Michael had said again, and had reached for Gabriel's shoulder only to have the larger angel turn away. Michael had brought his hand back and stared at it, as though something precious had just slipped away. "Brother, my actions do not indicate a weakness of spirit, as you seem to think. Our Father gave us hearts for a reason, and He _is _both loving and merciful. You would pass judgment on these, our brothers and sisters—"

"It is not our place to pass judgment," Gabriel had interrupted sharply, and if his voice had been any stronger it might have been a shout. "Nor, as you seem to forget, is it our place to grant clemency!" He had taken in a breath through his teeth, trying to calm himself. The feathers on his wings were splayed with bladed tension. "We are only here," he said slowly, "to execute His will. To serve them however He desires, and to end them however He desires. To love Him, only." His mouth grew tight. "They _tempt _you," he said coldly, and perhaps Michael heard the thing beneath the coldness, the thing which sounded frightened, and bereft.

Perhaps he heard it, but he said nothing. Perhaps he did not know what to say.  
>And the canyon grew deeper.<p>

**oOo**

"_Come," Michael said, urging his brothers forward. "Father needs us now."_

"_Does He?" Uriel wondered aloud._

_Gabriel shot him a stern look. Tension sang through every fiery nerve in the four remaining archangels. "Do you not trust Him?" he asked sharply, but Michael silenced him with a brief wave of his hand. _

"_I look at these Sixth-Day Wonders," the second-favorite son said, "and I am reminded that His every creation has been more wondrous and strange than the last. I catch a glimpse of what He sees, and it fills my heart with joy and hope."_

"_With Sammael hounding them, they will destoy themselves within a handful of millennia," Raphael suggested sadly. "He will attack them constantly, to try to prove himself to Father. Not only in times of great significance, but in all the quiet times between: he will distract them with great atrocities, while he slowly eats away at their courage with weapons of self-doubt and despair. He will be relentless, Michael. Every hour will be their most desperate."_

"_Then we must protect them," Michael said. "We must guard their hearts—for they are our brothers and sisters as well."_

"_It galls me," Uriel admitted after a silence."To bow to them. I confess to the sin of jealousy."_

_Gabriel felt it too, but he shook his head. Such emotion was easily overlooked when he thought of his Father. More strongly than any reluctance, he felt—even now—Father's pain, His heartache. Regardless of rank and favor, He had lost just over a third of His beloved children today…No, not_ lost_. He had been brutally betrayed. And in this moment, still grappling with the evidence of his Father's heart-wound, of the deepest treachery of the spirit at Sammael's disobedience and pride, Gabriel knew he would never wound his Father in this way._

Never.

"_Michael speaks wisely," Gabriel said. "As does Raphael. Every day, every moment—every heartbeat—must be a war for their souls. We must not let them lose heart. This," he said, with nothing but love in him, "is what Father wants."_

"_It's what He_ needs_,_"_ Michael added. "He _needs_ us. At His side. He needs His remaining sons to show both their allegiance and their love."_

_And before Raphael or Uriel could say another word, Michael was striding toward the throne, with Gabriel flanking him on the right. At the pinnacle of heaven, Father sat, radiating sorrow._

"_Father," Michael said, and his voice rang out. "We will serve."_

"_You will serve Me?" He asked. "Or you will serve My newest sons and daughters?"_

_Gabriel waited, and swallowed the bitterness under his tongue. He breathed deeply, and took any thought of his own—any notion of willfulness or self-importance—and he locked them away, far beyond reach. In time, he thought, they would even cease to be a temptation. For his Father, he would do anything. For his Father, _he would always obey, _and_ he would never betray Him. _For his Father, he would act as guardian for mankind. _

_He would not let them break His heart._

"_Both," said Michael. "Always, and with unconditional love." He dropped to one knee, bowing his head._

_Gabriel closed his eyes. "Unconditional love," he echoed firmly, and knelt._

**oOo**

Bethany knelt.

"Can't you just heal me, Gabe?" Joy whined.

"It does not work like that, child," Gabriel responded, with something like regret—even though it was just a small wound. He watched intently as Bethany cleaned the blood away from her sister's knee, blowing on it to ease the sting of the antiseptic. Her lips were a soft moue, and he saw now—so clearly—what made her precious to his Father, limitless and beloved.

_This is where I find God._

"Owww," said Joy.

"Oh, hush," said Bethany. "You've had worse than this, haven't you?"

"Bossy know-it-all," Joy sulked.

"Yeah, yeah. Ya big baby." She placed a feather-light kiss on her sister's knee before sealing it with a Band-Aid. The gesture came so naturally, so easily, that Gabriel's wings constricted with the nearness of it, the familiar fragrance of a memory.

"All better?" she asked.

"The kiss helped," Joy admitted grudgingly.

**Word Count: 2,903  
>Completed: May 15<strong>**th****, 2011  
>This chapter is dedicated to ROGUEFURY, one of my kindest and most constant readers, and a dear friend and fellow writer (feel free to check out her stuff!). She posed a question waaaay back (in the beginning, haha) that inspired this brief backstory.<strong>

**I realize this chapter may be confusing. It started off as an actual, legitimate drabble (rather than a long, drabblish-chapter thing), which then spawned other drabbles, but I didn't want to spread them out over multiple chapters, so…here they are. I know I have had a reviewer or two inform me that flashbacks-within-flashbacks are so confusing, but…I think memory is like that sometimes. At any rate, while I am not averse to creating **_**some **_**confusion in my readers, I hope this was coherent **_**enough.**_

**Important images that I hope everyone picked up on, but am afraid I perhaps was not successful at emphasizing (and they meant a lot to me, along with the craftsmanship of this chapter, so I have to address them here):  
>1. Gabriel is wounded by Sammael, and when this wound goes unchecked by his brother, it grows. Joy's scraped knee ("even though it was just a small wound") is given loving attention. The idea is that even a small thing can become devastating if ignored, and that the "direct approach" has healing power in and of itself. Granted, these sisters have other divisive problems, but as a whole their relationship is much healthier, I think, than Gabriel's and Michael's in their latter days.<br>2. The other image is the wound as a "canyon" which Michael tries to "work around." On the other hand, Bethany and Joy have no qualms with taking Gabriel directly to the heart of the canyon and are actually—quite literally, considering their destination—doing precisely that.**

**In other news….the next installment will be HUGE! Like, three chapters, plus as interlude! And then you will all hate me! :) Just know: this is where the story was **_**always **_**heading.  
>All author's notes for Chapters 24-26 will be located at the end of the next interlude (though the story is far from over yet).<strong>

****I feel like this title is self-explanatory, but for those of you unaware, _In the beginning…_are the first three words of the bible, describing the Creation story (interestingly, they are echoed again in John, which retells Creation briefly and interestingly, taking into account the idea of the Trinity as a relational being in and of itself). [c. Genesis 1, John 1]


	32. Idyllica: Rooftop Invitations

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**oOo**

**Idyllica: Rooftop Invitations**_  
>She went up to the roof and said to them […]<em>  
>"<em>Please swear to me by the Lord that you will show kindness to my family,<br>because I have shown kindness to you […]_  
>—<em>and save them from death."<em>**  
>Joshua 2: 8-13<strong>

I've uploaded one more piece of fanart for this fanfiction, and I think it adequately embodies the relationship of our little trinity here (in spite of its roughness, and my epic failure in capturing Kevin Durand's face).

In any case, I think it's definitely worth taking a look at **before** reading the next three chapters plus interlude.

Link (copy and paste into address bar, remove spaces):

http :/ fyrefly-nyxa. deviantart. com/art/LEGION-Men-and-Angels-II-209137607


	33. XXIV: Beloved

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels**  
>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXIV: Beloved**_  
>Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death.<em>**  
>Song of Solomon 8: 6<strong>

When Bethany struck out just after dawn the next morning, in search of bottled water and basic first aid supplies in nearby houses, Gabriel went with her. Joy was still sleeping, as was her trend, and the morning air was cool and sweet—good weather, in the desert, for raiding.

While they walked, Bethany chattered ceaselessly, and he marveled anew at the difference between the two sisters. Looking downward and sideways, he caught a glimpse of her copper-bright eyes catching sunlight, the deep scar, the flashing whiteness of her teeth—and in that moment he wanted to stop her, to answer any prayer she might have. The words welled in his mouth, a verse written long ago by a king in awe of a vineyard-woman—_you are a lily among thorns_—and he froze in the street, his lips already parting to speak.

But instead of a song of songs, there was the sound of squealing tires in the distance. Both of them startled, and Gabriel's gaze slanted in the direction of the sound, and something went out of the air: a certain flavor or scent, a certain clarity which he'd grown accustomed to without noticing.

And suddenly, he _knew_, in the way that only angels can know.

He launched into the air without thinking, without waiting. It occurred to him to take Bethany with him, and he immediately rejected the notion. There could be no time to waste, and even then, he wasn't sure he would want her to—

_see._

Baby was barreling down the road, but he ignored the truck in favor of the younger sister, who was sprawled against the curb. He could see clearly what had taken place here: human refugees, less generous than Bethany and her dark-eyed Joy. They had taken the truck, and when Joy had heard the motor started—and who wouldn't hear it? the contraption all but _roared_—she had run out to protest and defend. Instead, they had mowed her down with such force that her legs were now strangely shaped, inhuman. He could see a mess of red, and her white ribs splintering through her chest, the missing skin on her swollen jaw, where her face had been scraped clean of the bone. Her blood was a faint smear on the concrete; he was vaguely surprised that there wasn't more. For a moment he thought she was already gone, but then he felt her: a soul, tattered and fluttering at the edges, waiting to be free.

_Can't you just heal me, Gabe?  
>It does not work like that, child.<em>

"Joy," he said, and knelt at her side—a position he had once taken eons ago after his brother's fall, a position he had just moments ago yearned to echo before this wounded girl's sister. His hands were infinitely gentle when he took her fingers in his palm, delicately smoothing the flesh there. He was startled to find that his fingers were shaking.

Her eyes rolled blindly at the sky. "Gabe?" she asked, and her voice was full of fear and trembling and fluid, which sprayed out in a fine red mist. "I can't see you—I can't move—"

He touched her brow. "I am here," he said, though his voice was low and tight with dread.

"Where," she asked, desperation leaking in, "—where will I go?"

He knew immediately what she meant, and that she would even question such a thing made him want to weep. "I have no doubt that on this day you will be welcomed lovingly into heaven."

She sighed softly, and if he hadn't known better, he might have thought it her last breath. "Gabe," she said tremulously, "will I see you there someday?"

Her words wrapped around his heart and constricted. To know she would miss him…

"I do not know," he confessed. And he understood, suddenly, what an uncertain thing it was to not know your place in Father's plan.

And then, the realization fast on its heels but so very slow and painful, like a cactus that bloomed in the cold night: _he did not know. _

It might very well be his last moment with Joy.

"I will," she said suddenly, calmly—without any shadow of doubt. Then: "Gabe?" Tears sheened her blind eyes. "Will the angels hate me?"

He did weep then—silently and stoically, too full of grief to hold back the clean wash of tears.

"It is _impossible_," he told her steadily, with more certainty than he'd ever felt anything before.

"What if," she asked. "What if I see the angel who—who hurt me?"

He swallowed thickly, and tears slid down his throat and over his collarbone. He leaned close and, very gently, he whispered into her ear. "If you see him, say this one thing, and I vow to you: you will never need fear him again. If you see him, you will tell him—that you are beloved by Gabriel the Archangel."

Her eyes focused suddenly and she managed a small, sweet, and very young smile. "Take care of my sister, Gabe," she said, and her voice was a child's. "She sucks at knowing when it's okay to let go." And then, with just a whisper of breath, she added, "I love you too, Big Brother."

He had seen humans die before, but never had he _felt _it. Something empty and swallowing opened up inside him and he realized how frighteningly simple a thing it was: for a soul to slip away. How bereft one felt at the sight of the empty shell, which only served as a reminder of the desolate loss. And what if Joy was wrong? What if he never did receive Grace, and was never welcomed back to his Father's kingdom? This child had invited him into her family, in spite of all the reasons she had to fear him. She had sought him out, and held out her open palm to him on a desert street in the parched late-afternoon light. The thought that he might have lost this dark-eyed haunted human child—_forever—_was suddenly more than he could bear. His heart wrenched open at the reality of it, the raw ugliness of the sudden wound, the loneliness of it, the vast open haunting burden of freedom. He pressed her hand against his armored chest, and when that was not enough, he lifted it to the place where his shoulder joined the side of his throat, where his pulse beat strongly. He dug her knuckles into the flesh there, then pressed them desperately to his mouth, as if he could call her back.

"Gabriel?" Bethany said from a few steps away, and everything in her voice was a question, and each one sounded lost.

**Word Count: 1,125  
>Completed: May 16<strong>**th****, 2011**


	34. XXV: The Longest Night

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXV: The Longest Night**_  
>How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!<em>**  
>Lamentations 1:1<strong>

Bethany remembered many things from her childhood, and most of them were about her baby sister:

how beautiful she was (she smelled like clean laundry and flowers). How comforting it was to rub her own cheek against the soft crown of Joy's head (fuzz-noggin). How she begged her mother to let her push the stroller (pretty please, with sugar on top, and a sundae, with a cherry, and sprinkles), and soon taught herself all the right ways to hold Joy's bottle (up at the end, just a little, and squeezing the baggie inside so no air got in). Eventually, she'd made it her mission to teach the infant how to pull herself across the floor on her arms and wiggling knees (like the army-guys on TV). Later, she shared her princess dress-up clothes (even the fluffy dress with the rainbow glitter, and the shoes with the big diamonds on them and the feathers), and read Joy stories (like _The Cricket in Times Square_), and taught her to play hide-and-seek (and all the best hiding places)—and of course, they took baths together (first with bubbles, and then in swimsuits). And soon, it was lessons in riding two-wheel bikes (when you get it right, Fuzz-Noggin, I'll get you some of those pom-poms for your handlebars with my allowance), and climbing trees (six wide planks, they learned, made a serviceable treehouse), applying make-up (now for mascara—no, doofus, don't blink!). While their parents were away, Bethany would sometimes take Joy to dirt roads and begin teaching her how to drive (so much laughter, and false screams of terror).

_**But first:**_

In the hospital, the light was bright and sterile and thin, and the world outside was navy-blue. Bethany, only six-fingers-old, sat in a chair made of stainless steel and stale fabric, leaning against the bed and staring down at the infant in her Mama's arms.

"She looks," Bethany pronounced judiciously, "like a cute li'l monkey-face"—and Mama and Daddy laughed, which kinda made her mad.

After all, Joy might have been wrinkled and pinched, and her eyes were still a hazy shade of unfocused blue-gray. But _oh, oh, _when Bethany looked at her crinkly little face, she suddenly felt a hole open up in her heart, and she knew that _this _was the answer to all the fairy-tales she'd been told—that suddenly, she was a part of something so much bigger and sparklier than she'd ever imagined in all her games of let's-pretend.

"Kin she be mine, Mama?" Bethany breathed then, and her mother laughed, even though she sounded sleepy.

"Yours? Oh, Bess. You say the oddest things."

"I promise I'll always take care of her."

Bethany reached out and touched her sister's clenched fist, and she thought her sister seemed so _teeny-tiny, _even though her own hand wasn't much larger.

"She kin share my room," Bethany offered, "when you get back. You're comin' back soon, right?"

"A couple days, Bess," Daddy rumbled from the other side of the bed. He sounded sleepy too.

"Oh," she said, disappointed. "Okay." And she kept her eyes on her sister, on the amazing things Joy was doing with her monkey-face, squishing it up like that, snuffling and yawning. A terrible, wonderful thought filled Bethany's head like one of those balloons at the fair, the silver kind that floated, not the kind that stayed on the ground. For a moment, she almost didn't know what to do with this thought, but then she took a breath and spilled it anyway.

"Kin I hold her?" she asked at last, hardly believing she dared to say the words. Why would Mama ever want to let Joy go, even for a minute?

But Mama looked at Daddy, and she did that nodding-thing, and he got a pillow and put it under Bethany's arm and showed her how to make a cradle, and very gently Mama laid Joy inside the cradle.

And Bethany didn't move. She stayed very still and very quiet, and in that quietness, she thought she felt fireflies and little stars going from her heart into Joy's, and back again. Years later, leaning over her sister in the shadows beneath the watchful gaze of an abandoned angel, she would find another phrase for it:

_This is where I find God._

She held onto her sister, and she whispered, "Come home soon, Joy. Come home."

**oOo**

Over a decade and a half later, and it was hard to believe that it was Christmastime, or that this was still the home she'd grown up in, or even that Bethany had been happy that morning.

Everything smelled of blood and burnt skin.

"Joy," she said into the darkness, and her voice was surprisingly strong. "Joy, I love you."

There was a snicker and a scuttle, from somewhere near the ceiling, and her sister's voice rang out, though it sounded uglier than anything Bethany had ever heard from her: "Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur...He overthrew cities, destroying all the living, and all that grew on the land."

Bethany half-turned. The Christmas tree, tipped on its side, blinked its multicolored lights eerily, and the darkness seemed to smother their glow. Shadows covered her eyes, blinding her, but she could hear her sister somewhere above the bay windows.

Joy was in there somewhere, but she wasn't the one in control.

"Kiddo," Bethany said. "Come down from there. Come to me, sweetheart."

There was a quick thudding and Bethany turned, following the sound with her weak human eyes, and almost tripped over the recliner. She sucked in a breath. She had forgotten their father was there—what remained of him. _Daddy,_ shethought, and then:_ Joy can't see this when she wakes up._

Never mind that it had been Joy's hands that killed him, each fingertip bringing an smouldering wound to the surface of his skin, riddling him with blue flame and smoking sores. He'd tried to move, to get away, his blue eyes full of betrayal—but Joy had been too quick, and she'd laughed, her fingers dancing a series of fires up and down their father's face.

Bethany shrugged out of her wool coat and draped it gently over the scorched remains of their father's blackened head.

"No need for that, sister," the creature in Joy's body said. "_He_ is not your father, after all. _You_ belong to your true father. You are a daughter of the devil. You carry out _all_ of Lucifer's sins."

"Honey," Bethany coaxed, ignoring the words, pushing down the pain they wrought in her. "Honey, come here to me."

The thing on the ceiling laughed, and shifted, and the streetlamps poured light through the bay window and glistened on her black, black eyes. "I _pray_ that I am the host who ends you and _all_ your kin. _Happy_ is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks."

Bethany sucked in a breath and met her sister's mad eyes without flinching. Such vitriol would never spill from Joy's lips willingly—Joy, who as a child had convinced all her first-grade friends to buy presents for a neglected classmate. Joy, upon whose fingers Bethany thought she could weave the world.

And then she heard a popping noise, the sound of Joy's jaw as it wrenched from its socket, stretching wide. Her teeth looked longer than usual: harder, brighter. All her joints twisted; she contorted painfully and leapt: from the corner, to the back of the couch—to Bethany.

Perhaps the thing had expected her to stumble, or to run. To fall back, shielding herself from the rabid creature that was her sister. Perhaps it had intended to use surprise to tear out her throat with those monstrous teeth, or to burn her alive from the inside out, like their father.

But Bethany didn't run, or turn, or try to escape. Without thinking, she opened her arms, and the thing's gaze widened, and it tried to shy away in midair. But it was too late—they collided—and Bethany wrapped her arms tightly around it, instinctively taking the brunt of the fall as they crashed into an endtable and then the wall. She hit the floor solidly, her head cracking against the hard wood…but she did not let go.

She cradled the back of Joy's head, pressing her sister's cheek into the place where her shoulder met her neck. Her skin was scaldingly hot, feverish, and something in the back of Bethany's mind whispered forebodingly of body temperatures and brain damage.

Joy clawed.

Her arms moved in strange ways now; her nails seemed longer and harder. Bethany gasped and arched as her back was scored through. "Joy, Joy," she whispered as the thing fought her. They rolled and struggled, and her sister tore at her, and thrashed, and all of Bethany's muscles protested. "Joy," she whispered in her sister's ear, even as the teeth clamped onto her shoulder. She screamed through her teeth as a chunk of skin was torn free, and the thing spat it out in disgust. "Joy," she repeated again, "Don't do this thing, honey. Don't let it win. We can hold out, kiddo: you and me. Come home to me, Joy."

"You are lower than swine!" the thing shrieked. Bethany grunted as—somehow—Joy's knee found her abdomen. It locked its legs with hers, bending them painfully, almost to the point of snapping. "You are not fit to kiss my Father's sandals, nor bathe His feet with your hair!"

"I love you, Joy," she panted as they rolled. Another endtable fell, the lamp shattering beside them. "Remember when you were six? Remember how those boys teased you because you were still riding your bike with training wheels? And I taught you how to ride a two-wheel. We spent _days, _Joy, and we were so scraped up, the two of us…do you remember, Joy? Do you remember—waking me up on Christmas morning, jumping on my bed? Even last year, Joy, even though we're both grown up. Or—the blanket fort in the living room that we used to build every weekend. Joy—"

They rolled again, and now the thing was reaching, writhing, and it mashed Bethany's face to one side. The strength of Joy's hand on her jaw was crushing, but the pain it caused—the ink-dark bruising that would show up later—was dwarfed by the sudden lance of fiery heat that surged across Bethany's brow. Joy's hand was locked tightly around a long, dagger-like shard from the lamp, which curved wickedly in the darkness. The glitter of it caught Bethany's eye, and beyond it: the sight of Joy's face, bold and triumphant.

_Sister! _Bethany's heart screamed.

Joy—the thing inside her—raked the blade brutally and calculatedly down her sister's face, slow and tearing. Bethany heard her own skin rip, and she gagged on the heat and the sound of it.

_Don't let go,_ something inside her sobbed.

Groping with one desperate hand, she gripped the glass tightly and tore it away, losing skin on her fingers in the process. Bethany didn't notice, though—the pain in her face was blinding. Instead she rolled, pinning her sister to the floor far away from the shards of glass, suddenly terrified as she realized that half of her vision had blacked away.

She held tighter, blinking the blood from her eye furiously, whispering, "Okay. It's okay. Joy? Can you hear me? Honey, I'm fine. Come back to me. I'm not letting go. Do you hear me, Joy? _I am not letting you go. _I've _got_ you, honey."

Her elbows creaked and scraped on the ground. Her sister twisted beneath her, and now Bethany held her pinned, both of their faces pressed against the floor. Blood oozed down Bethany's face and into her sister's hair; where their flesh touched, her own reddened in slow, answering blisters. "Joy, I love you. I won't let go of you, honey; I've got you. I promise. Come home to me, Joy_. _Do you remember—how I told you—the first time I saw your sweet little monkey-face? What it did to me inside? How much I knew I loved you, right then? Come home, sweetheart. When this is done, we're gonna take Daddy's truck. We're gonna get in Baby and we're gonna drive wherever you want. The Grand Canyon, Joy; you said you wanted to go there after your senior year. We can go_ now_, Joy, you and me—"

"I loathe you!" the thing bellowed. "You offend God Himself!"

"Joy, do you remember—"

And she filled the thing's head with memories, with affirmations of love, with kindnesses. Again and again, between panting and sharp cries of unexpected pain, between grunts of exhaustion and ache, Bethany dripped honey in her sister's ears, telling their shared adventure: the story of two girls, sisters against the world.

"Come home, Joy. Honey, come home to me."

**oOo**

For a moment, there was no street. No surprisingly clean curb, no guttering engine of the Ford F150 receding in the distance. No clear skies, or sand, or even sunlight. Instead, Bethany was in the hospital room with the brittle light and the blue night outside. She was back in the living room, and it was Christmas, and the world smelled of holy fire and ozone and death.

Now the sight of someone else's little sister: on the pavement in the desert, clean and sprawled; her joints just as twisted, her jaw distended once more—

_Joy, I love you, stay with me, come back;  
>Joy, I love you, come home—<em>

—and everything came rushing back.

**oOo**

**Word Count: 2,267  
>Completed: May 16<strong>**th****, 2011**


	35. XXVI: Viaticum

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXVI: Viaticum**  
>…<em>And there arose a great wailing throughout all of Egypt,<br>for there was not a house without someone dead._**  
>Exodus 12: 30<strong>

The here and now suddenly intensified—grew bright and sharp and hard and _real,_ even as Bethany was vaguely aware of Gabriel rising heavily to his feet.

"No," she said quietly, as if she could deny the very world around them. The word was a bitter lie. "No. No. Gabriel, no—" and then she was running, stumbling over her own legs, which suddenly seemed so clumsy for a creature so steeped in grace. He caught her body before she reached her sister: reached out and plucked her up in his arms by her waist, her feet swinging upward off the ground as she struggled in mid-air. She flailed against him; he held her anyway, cradling her back against his armored chest, and he thought he could feel everything inside her—her lungs, her cells, the bones around her heart. And he wondered—bright and hot and quick as lightning—if she had felt the same thing when she'd held onto him that first night, if she'd struggled to hold all the broken parts of him inside.

If she'd felt her sister like this, pinned in her arms, possessed by an angel.

"Do not look," he said, turning her in his arms and holding her chin with one calloused hand, forcing her gaze to his. He could not let her see Joy's blank face, the coldness of her blood-misted lips, the emptiness around the eyes. But Bethany's gaze kept skittering sideways, trying to see; they were wider than he'd ever thought possible, and panicked like an animal's, and he was _afraid_—was that what it was? He felt sick inside with the feel of it—afraid that he might lose these pieces of her, like small chips of bone, and never be able to put her back together. She twisted against him, trying to get away, to go to her sister's side. "_Do not look,_ Bethany." With one arm he held her firmly; with his other hand he anchored her face against his chestplate.

But she was already screaming, her throat so ragged with it that he thought she might have torn something inside. It was the sound of Egypt on a desolate night, years and years ago: a wordless, begging wail. She fought him, and he let her, at a loss. He didn't know what to do. He felt like the whole universe was laced together with grief.

And regret.

And loneliness.

She kept screaming, not fighting now but clinging to him. Her blunt human nails scraped furrows into his arms and the back of his neck as she tried to crawl inside his skin. Her hands knotted in his hair, in the buckles and laces of his armor, in the soft inner feathers of his wings—as though she couldn't trust him to hold on: as though she would die if he let her go.

He gazed around, empty in a way he hadn't felt since the moment he knew he'd failed his Father. He closed his eyes and felt the marks she'd clawed into his skin, and he thought they hurt more than any wound he'd ever received in battle, more even than Michael's sword piercing his side. And strangely, they didn't seem to hurt _enough. _ He held her, his hands broad and soft on the bones of her back, his fingertips finding the shape of her scapulae.

"I held on," she panted, breathless, her voice rasping in her throat. She was shuddering, her hands scrabbling against his wings, his back—trying to find purchase, some sort of safety, some sort of haven from the pain. Her knees scraped against his abdomen as though she would climb him; he knew—intimately—the pain in her belly, the feeling she was trying to rid herself of, as though something was clawing its way out of her. "Gabriel, _please_, I held on—"

Her words reopened the ugly wound in his heart. A shudder racked his large frame; he shook convulsively in spite of himself. There was so much emptiness, barrenness, and he was suddenly _so far _from home.

"I am sorry," he said slowly, and meant it more deeply than he'd ever thought possible, though he was no longer certain what he was sorry _for_. The apocalypse, yes; and the sundering of her small family, and the ruination that had sent them on this journey in the first place, that had created a world full of raiders and strangers. But he was sorry, too, for the ragged hole inside her now, for the ragged hole inside _himself—_as though his last vestige of heaven had been skinned away.

She moaned low in her throat, her head rolling against his shoulder like that of a wounded animal. The sound was an agony, and his hands tightened on her fragile body. "Bethany," he repeated. "_I am sorry_."

He catapulted into the air then, taking her with him, leaving behind the sunburnt street and the place where the little girl lay.

**Word Count: 830  
>Completed: May 16<strong>**th****, 2011**


	36. Interlude VIII: Wake

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Interlude: Wake**_  
>Jesus wept.<em>**  
>John 11: 35<strong>

He held her on the roof of a different house that night, one he had found at random and hoped was habitable. In the darkness, he kept vigil over her as she had once done for him. They said nothing, lapsing into the silence that had once so deeply characterized his times with Joy. Quietly, she wept, and he wept beside her; she scrubbed her face roughly with her fists until he held onto her wrists, his own hands becoming gentle manacles. He thought that they could water the desert, that they might flood the parched sand until they drowned together in their shared salt. He imagined she could see nothing but the vast ocean of her own grief—which he imagined must be just like his, and moreso.

He held her wrists. He murmured into her hair. He breathed in the scent of their tears, as bright and hard as desolate stars.

She raised her bruised-looking eyes to him. "What is it you are saying?" she asked, and her voice was reedy and thin.

He hesitated in the darkness. "It is an angelic psalm," he answered after a moment of stillness. The desert air lay heavily upon them.

"It sounds beautiful," she whispered, but the words were sodden with grief. "What does it mean?"

He stared down at her. "You know this already," he said reluctantly, and did not know why he was apprehensive, suddenly so-self-conscious at his meager offering of words.

"Tell me anyway," she whispered, and it was a plea he could not ignore.

Still, he hesitated, and when he spoke again his voice seemed to fill all the crevices between the shadows, and perhaps—he thought—perhaps with this, he could call her through the night much as she had once called to Joy.

"Yea," he said, and his chest rumbled beneath her cheek, "though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil. For Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me."

He breathed in deeply, and she lay still against him, and he hoped the familiarity of these words might ease her ache, that the meaning behind them might soothe her heart.

"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup runneth over."

He lifted one hand: it trembled as he laid his palm very carefully against the crown of her head, feeling her hair like wisping silk between his fingers. His voice grew very quiet, and very low, and very full and aching.

"Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life—and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever and ever."

In these last words, he felt her stir. His hand retreated quickly from her hair, yearning for something he could not name—but she turned in his arms and studied his face as though she would memorize every line of it, cut starkly against the lonely moon. Fingers splayed, she had reached out to him soundlessly, her fingertips whispering on five starlike points of his face before her palm softened to cup his jaw. In that moment, he saw that in spite of her own pain, she had recognized his.

_Just—_she had said once—_let me do this one thing for you._

The touch felt like absolution.

_Lo! I tell you a mystery:  
>we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.<br>For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.  
>For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.<br>When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  
>"Death is swallowed up in victory."<em>  
><strong>1 Corinthians 15: 51-54<strong>

**oOo**

**Word Count: 561  
>Completed: May 16<strong>**th****, 2011  
>Chapter 24 (Beloved): Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) is subject to many interpretations (that Solomon wrote it, that it was about<strong>**Solomon and a member of his harem, that it was about a shepherd-boy and a Shalumite girl who worked in her brothers' vineyards, and of course, that it is actually about God and the Israelites (or Christ and Church), etc. For the purposes of this fiction, I combined and altered some of these interpretations. ******_Beloved _is a multilayered title. Clearly there is the allusion to Joy, whom Gabriel loves (and whom he tells this to). It is also an allusion to the female character in _Song of Songs,_ who is called "the Beloved" (and would be Bethany). This verse was carefully chosen from the same book. [c. Song of Solomon]**  
>Chapter 25 (The Longest Night): Much of the possessing angel's dialogue was adapted (and occasionally lifted wholesale) from Psalm 137, Genesis 19, and John 8. <strong>****The title is an allusion to the night of the Last Supper, just prior to the Crucifixion. On this night, Jesus ate his last meal with his friends, acknowledged his betrayer, went and prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, was betrayed by a kiss and taken into custody, was denied three times, and began the trial that would eventually lead to his death. It is also—clearly, I think—about the night that Joy was angel-possessed, and Bethany held her for hours on end. [c. Mark 14]**  
>Chapter 26 (Viaticum): <strong>****_Viaticum _is the final aspect of the three parts that comprise the Roman Catholic Church's Last Rites. It is the dying person's last reception of Eucharist, and the term is Latin, meaning _provision for the journey._**  
>Interlude 8 (Wake): Gabriel's psalm is, of course, the famous 23<strong>**rd****. I looked for ages to find something rarer, but I thought nothing was as fitting or as poignant, and that nothing would comfort Bethany as much as the familiarity of this funeral reading, a haunting eulogy whispered by an angel in the desert. ******The wake refers to the time after death but prior to the funeral, when family members kept vigil over their loved one. There is some debate over the original purpose of the wake (including the general and secular belief that it was to ensure that the deceased was "really dead" before burying them). However, many scholars believe it was originally practiced in response to the story of the Garden of Gethsemane, where—on the night he was betrayed—Jesus asked his friends to keep watch over him while he prayed. [c. Mark 14]


	37. XXVII: Exodus

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXVII: Exodus**  
><em>When Job's three friends…heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.<br>When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads.  
>Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights.<br>No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was._  
><strong>Job 2: 11-13<strong>

Gabriel wanted to take her away, but he did not know to where. And then, at the same time, he couldn't bear to move her, because her pain was carving through the air in this place until it had become a comfort to her, and he was certain that leaving would reopen the wound. She wrapped her grief around her like a blanket, like a consolation, and could not be moved.

In silence, he sat with her every night, counting the bones in her wrists as he held them. During the day, he watched as she made breakfast for herself, stared out at the sunrise, made cups of tea that she never drank. Too many times, habit moved her to some action that was no longer necessary—setting a second place at the table, or toasting an extra pair of waffles. Only once did he leave her side—she had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion, and he had taken the precious few moments to take Joy's suddenly small body a few lengths into the wilderness, where he buried her beneath a flowering cactus and carefully piled a mound of stones atop the grave, in order to keep the wild coyotes at bay. Many times he considered pursuing Baby and its thieves—meting out _holy justice_, though he knew he was treading dangerously close to _revenge—_but the notion was immediately rejected.

Bethany was his only priority.

In the rest of his moments, he stayed still and watchful, lost. He did not know how to save this older sister, and did not know how to reach her.

Finally, Bethany made the decision for him, breaking their shared silence for the first time since he had whispered Joy's eulogy in the dark.

"I want to leave," she said. Her voice was hollowed out and hoarse, and it floated to him on the shadows like an empty canoe.

He hesitated. He remembered Michael's reappearance, bathed in glory, but when he looked out into the night, it seemed to him that all he could see was the still, silent husk of Joy's body.

"Where will we go?" he asked quietly, and it reminded him of her question on the first day, when he'd awakened in the bed of her truck. _Where will you go?_ she'd asked, and he'd only been able to answer: _Where, indeed._

She lifted her face. It was beautiful in its battle-weariness. "Where I promised," she said—full of grace, and ever-faithful.

**Word Count: 411  
>Completed: May 18<strong>**th****, 2011  
>I want to thank everyone again. The response to Joy's death has been overwhelmingly hopeful and inspiring, and I am told than many of you experienced the same bittersweetness I felt while writing it—or even more deeply, experienced the tragedy along with Gabriel and Bethany. That means the world to me. While the next few chapters deal with the ramifications of this loss, both for Beth and Gabe (and their relationship), I promised a happy ending and I will deliver. :)<strong>

**Another IMPORTANT note: I had mentioned waaaaay back in **_**Chapter XVI: Bethel**_** (Chapter 20 in the dropdown menu) that I had stolen a line from another **_**Legion **_**fanfiction but couldn't remember where—only, that I thought the scene was poignant and lovely. It was from Greenwood Elf's piece, **_**Absolution, **_**which I assume most of you are already reading (and if not, you should get over there right away!). She has some lovely, delicate. Intricate things going on there, with beautifully-sculpted scenes and lovingly-crafted characters. You'll adore her Gabriel. Please, please, go read. **

**** "The Exodus" refers explicitly to the Israelites' flight from enslavement in Egypt, and the 40 years they spent wandering the desert with God protecting them, feeding them, and providing for all their needs, in spite of their doubts and betrayals of Him. At the end of the 40 years, they reach the Promised Land [c. Exodus 14-24]


	38. XXVIII: Calvary

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXVIII: Calvary**_  
>Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:<br>if either of them falls down, one can help the other up.  
>But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.<em>  
><strong>Ecclesiastes 4: 9-10<strong>_  
>He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge;<br>his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart._**  
>Psalm 91: 4<strong>

Bethany drove longer hours than he thought might be entirely healthy for a human, stopping to sleep only rarely. When she'd first found the car—its keys sprawled longingly on the pavement beside the door, a clear artifact of the apocalypse—she had stared so long and grown so still that he thought perhaps they wouldn't leave after all, and that he would have to carry her, mute, back to the house he'd found.

But then, swiftly, all her broken pieces coalesced in some haphazard semblance of strength—at least the façade of it—and she scooped up the keys and slid silently into the driver's seat.

Before they'd left entirely, he'd shown her Joy's grave: it had seemed important, though he wasn't sure whether she viewed it as gift or a condemnation. Still, she had wept silently, and tugged on his arm until he had leaned close, expecting her to whisper something: a thank you, perhaps, or an accusation.

Instead, she'd pressed her tear-salted lips to his cheek, and he'd been flooded with an inconsolable ache ever since.

Now he fanned his wings to catch a billowing draft, banking right in the sky to turn toward her as, far below, Bethany suddenly threw the little car into park. He watched as she tore open the door, slammed it shut with so much force her small body half-spun in a circle, kicked it fiercely, stalked twelve paces away, and turned and let loose a bone-chilling warcry.

He dropped like an arrow and landed lightly atop the hood of the car, bracing himself on one knee, one foot, and the blunt calloused fingertips of one hand.

"Bethany."

"I can't drive like this."

"I know."

"The car feels all _wrong."_

"I know."

"My God, it's too _quiet."_

"I know."

Her shoulders sagged, and he remembered once, weeks earlier, finding her crouched in a bathroom with her forehead pressed against the porcelain rim of the sink. _Always to slow to catch her, _she had whispered in the dark. _Always too slow to hold on. _She'd been clutching onto her pain with both hands and hadn't even known it, and he'd startled her in the darkness. He'd been startled himself, to be honest. Back then—distant, and removed from her seemingly-petty human existence—he had thought her a curious but irritating blend of foolishness and weakness.

Now he didn't know what to make of her at all, except that there was an open space in his heart for her. Open, but not empty: it felt like an embrace waiting to happen.

"Gabriel," she said brokenly. "They took the _box."_

It took him a moment to understand. Though neither sister had seemed to talk about it—before or after that initial sharing on a bright, too-brief morning after his prayers—he had only heard them call it a _treasure chest_.

"It had all of our memories in it," she whispered. "Everything I might have had left of her. Of them."

_I could survive many things,_ she'd confided to him once, her words hushed and—he realized now—pleading in the darkness. Perhaps she had still feared him, even then. _Not one of them includes losing her._

"Bethany," he coaxed. "You _will _overcome this. You will."

She did not acknowledge his words—not out loud. But he saw her soften around the edges, and it filled him with awe that she would allow him into her most vulnerable moments, her crippling pain.

"There is a small domicile over the next ridge," he cajoled. "I saw it from my zenith. Will you come?"

She was so weary. He could see it in her bones, in the way her hair shadowed her face, in the stark contrast of her scar. She wanted to be occupying herself with something, but it hurt her to move.

"Yes," she said at last, he watched her trudge back toward the small vehicle as though it were a prison cell, and everything in him ached for her.

**Word Count: 664  
>Completed: May 20<strong>**th****, 2011  
>I imagine that the updates will be coming fairly quickly now (more quickly?) as we wind down to a close. I generally like to post them in clusters of one-to-three-chapter installments, whatever seems most cohesive (certain things I don't want to break up, like "the revelation" of the possession, or Joy's death). Here's the breakdown for upcoming chapters, though I have yet to decide how I will cluster them:<strong>

**XXIX: Agape. **_A display of unconditional love and consolation._**  
>XXX: Babel. <strong>_Gabriel tells Bethany _exactly _what he thinks of her. As "exactly" as a cryptic messenger of God can ever say anything, anyway._**  
>XXXI: Forsaken. <strong>_Gabriel mourns._**  
>XXXII: Whisper. <strong>_A still, small voice pierces the storm._**  
>XXXIII: Revelations. <strong>_Gabriel finds God in the wilderness._**  
>Interlude IX: Hemmed. <strong>_ "You are searching for a reason for the apocalypse." "Among other things."_**  
>XXXIV: Metatron. <strong>_Gabriel is called home._**  
>XXXV: Psalmist. <strong>_Gabriel tells a story.  
><em>**XXXVI: St. Peter at the Gates. **_Reuniting with a brother._**  
>XXXVII: Prodigal. <strong>_God speaks._**  
>XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. <strong>_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._**  
><strong>

****_Calvary _is the Anglicized name for the hill where Jesus was crucified and possibly entombed. It is also known as Gol' Goatha. [c. John 19]


	39. XXIX: Agape

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXIX: Agape**  
><em>He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?"<br>Jesus replied, "You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand."_  
><strong>John 13: 6-7<strong>

She stared at him from across the master bathroom. Farmhouse it might be, but rugged it was not.

"You've never had a bubble bath?" she asked incredulously.

He eyed the tub disconcertedly. "No."

"Gabriel," she said, "you are a witness to miracles. And you've never had a bubble bath."

He lifted his chin haughtily to hide his sudden discomfort. "This conversation is trivial, and childish."

A mischievous light glinted in her eyes—the first he'd seen in the days since her sister died. "Are we not intended to come to God with the heart of a child?"

He was silent, still. And then, before he could stop himself, he leaned forward, peering into her luminous amber eyes. For a moment, he searched them.

She softened. He saw it around all the edges of her: a tendering, a gentling, as though the sharp corners of the last few days had been worn delicately away. And then her hand was between them, open, palm up.

"Join me," she said.

He reared back, horrified and stunned and—perhaps, just a little bit—_tempted._

She almost rolled her eyes. He saw it. How could she know—_you are a lily among thorns—_that her invitation struck more intimately than she supposed, and for entirely different reasons? But instead, she retreated, and smiled kindly, and said, "I'm no danger to you, Gabriel. I'll swear an oath that your maidenly virtue is safe with me." She grinned self-deprecatingly. "You do realize you're four times my size, built like a Coke machine, and have inhuman strength, right? Take off your metal," she added without waiting for a response, and she stepped up and into the pool full of iridescent froth—still fully-clothed. And she knelt, sighing and closing her eyes as the warm water rose above her breasts. She cupped her palms in the suds, and lifted them to him, full of bubbles like a gift.

"Look at these," she coaxed. "Take off your armor and _look, _Gabriel." She smiled, looking at her own hands, and he found himself secretly delighting in her eyes, in the flash of her teeth. "Each one is a perfect sphere," she said, and now her voice was hushed and marveling. "Every color is kept inside them, and they're so easily broken."

For a moment, he thought not of soap, but of human beings.

"Who engineers such things, Gabriel?" she asked wonderingly, and when he looked up from the delicate whorls of light, he found her eyes were a welcoming haven. "Gabriel," she repeated, "who?"

_Everything in this world is a prayer._

He moved so quickly she didn't even register it; if she had, she would have jumped backward, frightened, and possibly slipped on the glossy porcelain. Instead, one moment he was a few feet away, staring at her with such wounded intensity, and in the next his face was only inches from hers, his broad hands cupping either side of her jaw, his fingertips grazing the tendrils of hair at her temples as he steadied her. He leaned into her, the searching look back in his gaze. He moved his eyes into her deeply, as though there were some hidden truth buried within her, as though she held all the answers to his innermost questions: about God, the apocalypse, his own striving toward salvation. If he could only understand the wonder in her, and how it could exist so easily inside a human so beset by loss and tragedy, perhaps he could grasp God's love for them, and Michael's, and be able to love all of them the way he thought he might love her.

He thought perhaps he could bow before her—and _mean _it—in a way he hadn't for any other human being.

"Gabriel?" she called to him softly. Then her face crumbled, bit by broken bit, the scar dissolving in the expression of her hidden pain. "Please—don't look at me like that—" as though any small kindness or show of love might be her undoing.

And he remembered the darkness of another bathroom, shrouded in steam and shadows, where two sisters lay together—and the sound of Bethany's first secret story unfolding like a frightened flower in the night, and the quiet breath of a sleeping teenager who was now buried in the sand under a cairn of stones at the foot of a flowering cactus.

Abruptly he straightened, and untied the fastenings and medallions of his armor, and his pauldrons and vambraces and chestplate fell heavily to the ceramic floor, and he stepped in beside her.

"I am here," he said, and sank into the froth behind her. She went still at his sudden movement, her shoulders curving upward as though she could protect herself from the world. With one cautious hand, he reached out and gathered the curtain of her hair. She jumped at the unexpected contact, but he ignored the movement. The steam made the strands curl damply at the nape of her neck, and when he wet it, it became a heavy cascade of dark silk, gleaming so brightly it made him tremble in ways that he had not felt since the last time he was in the presence of God.

He twisted the fall of it gently in his warrior's hands, willing himself into a place of infinite tenderness, and proceeded to wash her hair.

**Word Count: 895  
>Completed: May 22<strong>**nd****, 2011  
>This is one of my favorite drabbles for this fanfiction.<strong>  
>****<em>Agape <em>is a Greek term for a specific "type" of love (along with _platonic, erotic,_ etc). It describes a kind of love that is spiritual, holy, and unconditional. In Christian theology it generally refers to the love of God/Christ for humanity.


	40. XXX: Babel

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXX: Babel**_  
>Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?"<br>"I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"_**  
>Genesis 4:9<strong>

Later, he lay beside her on top of the still-covered bed. She'd found an old man's button-down shirt to replace her own sopping clothes, which she'd carefully draped over the shower-rod to dry. They weren't touching, simply side-by-side in the quiet, watching as the sun set through the picture-window and cast slanting shadows of tangerine and pink across the walls. She smelled like soap now, and high skies, and the wind at dawn. Her hair curled damply on the bedspread.

"Gabriel," she called to him softly, and he knew she was thinking of her sister again.

"I am here," he responded, just as softly. His voice was like thunder in the distance, and he tried to gentle it for her. She was quiet for a moment, as if just hearing his words were enough. And then:

"She will never sit in a bathtub with me again."

His eyes fell softly shut. He could tell her she was wrong; he could remind her that she would see her sister, much sooner than it felt right now. Once you have tasted eternity, fifty years or a hundred seems only like a day. But he remembered—no, even still today, he felt it—the poignancy of the possibility that he might never again see his Father, his own brother.

That he might never see Joy.

And suddenly, saying such a thing to her seemed cruel and empty-hearted.

He hesitated, and then reached into the edge of his tunic. The photograph was folded, and singed at the edges from the heat of the holy fire that poured through his veins like magma, but he carefully opened it up and handed it to her in the darkness. She took the photo slowly, wonderingly, and he felt obligated to say, "Joy bid me take it," lest she think he stole it from her treasure chest of his own accord.

She touched the photo reverently, as though she could feel the warmth of her sister's skin, her laughter through the slick paper. "And you kept it by your heart?" she whispered softly.

He stared into the darkness above them. "Bethany—"

"If Joy wanted you to have it—"

"I am with you," he reminded her suddenly, his voice strong in the darkness. "As long as I have you, I have this picture, do I not?"

She was silent, and he could feel how torn she was between longing and her strange understanding of fairness.

"Keep it safe for me," he said quietly, coaxingly, and she pressed it to her collarbone, her other hand reaching for his in the darkness, gripping him so tightly it was almost painful, in spite of his superior strength.

"It was my fault," Bethany told him after a moment, and the pressure on his hand had not eased up. "I let her go."

Her words fell on him like a sword-blade. "Bethany," he said, "you were not even present." He thought of Michael holding him down, and he thought of Joy holding out her hand to him, and the sorrow was heavy on his tongue, within his wings.

"Not—this time." She paused, and hesitated. "Before. During—the apocalypse. If I had—caught hold of her sooner, all those people—our parents—they might not have died, and she wouldn't have thought there blood was on her hands." She turned her head; her hair sounded like silk sliding against the bed. She looked across at him in the dark, her bright eyes begging. "Gabriel—what are we if we can't protect our brothers and sisters?"

He knew—he _knew—_she wasn't referring to him, but her words laid him open, laid him bare. She might not admit it, but he understood that she was equating this new loss—Joy's death—to another death, months-old: a death of the spirit, which afterward made her sister stare into an ugly nothing, unblinking for hours on end. He understood that she was holding herself responsible for both. And he thought of Sammael leaping from the threshold of heaven without one glance to spare for his beloved brothers, and he thought of his blade sliding easily through Michael—and he knew that one day he would have to face what he had done, the open wound he'd hidden even from himself, which Bethany's First Aid sutures could not reach.

_We must protect them; we must guard their hearts—for they are our brothers and sisters.  
>…they are only lost.<em>

He half-rolled. In the darkness, his eyes sought hers: blue gas-flames to sleeping suns. He took both her fragile human hands in his—engulfed them in his own—and pressed her knuckles to his mouth, not noticing how her eyes widened.

"Bethany," he rumbled. "By your logic, I am responsible for all the fallen angels."

It took her a moment to understand him, and when she did, he watched in quiet awe as the myriad emotions played out across her face. Anguished empathy, and repentance, and sorrow—

—and love. He was on eye-level with her now, and it was startling what a difference it made: she was infinitely lovelier when he wasn't looking down on her.

"Gabriel, you are _not—_"

"Bethany, I do not say this so you might offer me comfort, but so that you might listen to your heart and what it tells you. When you read Father's Word, every book of it tells you to _think with your heart, _to _know in your heart, _to _believe with your heart._ Your mind is a tool, and my brother—the one now called Lucifer—he will use it to trick you, to silence the language of God which speaks from your heart." He looked up at her, his eyes solemn and flashing, like lightning reflected in blue mountain pools at night. "When the voice in your head tells you to doubt yourself—when it calls you unworthy because you failed to hold on to her—or because of the scar on your face, which you told me once was made from love—or for some sin for which you have already been forgiven—when it tells you this, _that is the lie_. You are made _to be _worthy, to be the pinnacle of His creation, His beloved. When that poisonous voice speaks, Bethany, you must listen instead to all that was made for you and in you, in glory and innocence and grace. You must listen to your heart."

And as he spoke the words, he knew how true they were, and he wondered briefly why he had not realized it before, or considered it in conjunction with all the other humans he'd intended to slay.

Now her honey-colored eyes shone with tears in the dark; they glistened on her lashes in starlike clusters. "I don't know how anymore," she whispered. "I can't hear it. And if I could, I don't think I know the—the language of God."

"Then I will speak it for you," he said determinedly, "and tell you all the things that I have come to know you are."

**Word Count: 1,178  
>Completed: May 22<strong>**nd****, 2011  
>I am going on a much-needed vacation for this week (by "vacation" I mean a friend is coming to visit and we are getting new tattoos and visiting an old professor and being lazy in the local haunts). I will try to get at least one update over the course of the next few days, but no promises—I hope this double-shot of comfort with tide you over!<strong>

**In other news, I am playing around with the idea of a _Smokin'Aces_ oneshot. A lot of my projects never get finished, and it's still in preliminary stages (and who knew? There happens to be a sister in it…again. I am getting predictable. NO TRAGEDY THOUGH OMG!)…but if you're interested, you might wanna subscribe or check back at my author page in a couple weeks (I'll keep you updated here too if I get around to posting it before this fic is done). Just in case any of you are more "Kevin Durand" fans than "Legion" fans. It will be a lot different from this fic, though (clearly).  
>Upcoming chapters:<strong>

**XXXI: Forsaken. **_Gabriel mourns._**  
>XXXII: Whisper. <strong>_A still, small voice pierces the storm._**  
>XXXIII: Revelations. <strong>_Gabriel finds God in the wilderness._**  
>Interlude IX: Hemmed. <strong>_ "You are searching for a reason for the apocalypse." "Among other things."_**  
>XXXIV: Metatron. <strong>_Gabriel is called home._**  
>XXXV: Psalmist. <strong>_Gabriel tells a story.  
><em>**XXXVI: St. Peter at the Gates. **_Reuniting with a brother._**  
>XXXVII: Prodigal. <strong>_God speaks._**  
>XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. <strong>_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._**  
><strong>

****_Babel _is the name of the tower erected by Noah's descendents, which was intended to reach up to heaven. God thwarted them by confusing their language (hence the colloquialism: _to babble_), but it is said that before this moment, all people spoke the same language as God and the angels. [c. Genesis 11]


	41. XXXI: Forsaken

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXI: Forsaken**_  
>My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?<em>**  
>Mark 15: 33<strong>

It was a few nights later, and he did not stay on the roof as had become his custom. Bethany had fallen to her own long exhaustion—both of body and of spirit—and he found himself unutterably, inconsolably alone.

He had not realized how much her presence had given him heart.

He took to the skies, winging his way through the air. It had been long days and long drives since Joy had died—too long, perhaps—but the wound was fresh, and it called to other wounds that Gabriel had long since thought lay dormant. He had wrestled with them for days, beneath Bethany's watchful gaze; though he had no doubt she saw his conflict, she had remained tactfully silent, patient.

Now, alone, he allowed the thoughts to rise, the wounds to reopen. Before his eyes, he saw again: both his brothers, Graceless and fallen; holy blood on his blade; the absence of the Gates of Heaven; the coldness of his own gaze reflected in Michael's eyes.

He saw again Joy's blank and haunted stare, unblinking: lost in some memory of a hellish possession, in the sight of her sister's blood staining her hands.

He saw the scar that tore its way through Bethany's perfection, and it might as well have been made with his own hand: a fiery weal left on both sisters' hearts.

His wings fanned and he swung lopsidedly through the air, wheeling back around, unwilling to let the house too far from his eyes and his reach. Father had—perhaps—entrusted these two human girls to him, and had he not already lost one? And still, the thing in his head was Michael's eyes, Michael's pain, Michael's begging him to rethink his position, to disobey. He had thought Michael's betrayal was like Sammael's, but perhaps it was his _own _betrayal—of Michael—that was far the worse.

He thought of Bethany holding onto Joy in the dark, whispering stories and memories and promises, refusing to sacrifice her sister to the thing within her, refusing to relinquish her love. He thought of his words to Michael: _I would not have shown you such mercy. _ There was no doubt in his mind, now, that Michael would have held onto him, had their roles been reversed: that Michael would have borne the wound for the sake of his brother's soul, that he would have done anything in his power to _save _him.

_Who are we if we can't protect our brothers and sisters?_  
><em>We must guard their hearts—<em>

The words ran through his head like the bloody Nile.  
>How had he failed? And when had he gotten so lost?<p>

Heaven had never seemed farther. His _Father _had never seemed farther. How had he ever thought that loyalty to his Father would mean forsaking everything He had created, and turning it all to ash?

His wings beat against the wind wildly, agitatedly. There was a copse of dying trees just shy of the house: he landed there, gracelessly, his knees plowing into the stony earth. His knuckles bit into the ground; he gripped the pebbles there, caked with dried mud. He swallowed and it made a strange, agonized sound in the back of his throat—again he heard Michael's voice, low and pleading in his ear as he embraced Gabriel from behind, trying to pin him to the earth, to some lost memory of what it felt like to love. Again, he felt the arms of the girl in the backseat of the vehicle, trying to protect the newborn Messiah.

Trying to hold onto him.

_I held on, _Bethany had said, begging for her sister's death to be untrue. _Please—I held on.  
><em>He could have told her that such a thing never made a difference.  
>But it <em>should. <em>Oh, it should.

The wound ripped open inside him, ugly and raw, far more painful than the long-healed slice in his side. He bowed low, his face between his gripping palms, his forehead pressing into the dirt as he groped wordlessly for forgiveness—not only from his Father, but from Michael as well, and from Joy, and from Bethany, and from the widower at the gas station, and from the woman who had borne the Second Messiah, and the man named Jeep and the dead girl who had tried to wrestle him from the back of the vehicle, and the man who had lain with a broken spine and a lighter in one hand—

—and a voice called him out of the void, so sweet and so quiet he almost didn't hear it, lost beneath the tumult of his own warring heart.

"Gabriel."

**Word Count: 774  
>Completed: May 25<strong>**th****, 2011**  
>****This title also goes hand-in-hand with the verse ("abandoned" and "forsaken" are often used interchangeably in translation). As he is on the cross, Jesus cries out, <em>Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? <em>which translates as: _My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?_ [c. Mark 15]

**Coming Soon:  
>XXXII: Whisper. <strong>_A still, small voice pierces the storm._**  
>XXXIII: Revelations. <strong>_Gabriel finds God in the wilderness._**  
>Interlude IX: Hemmed. <strong>_ "You are searching for a reason for the apocalypse." "Among other things."_**  
>XXXIV: Metatron. <strong>_Gabriel is called home._**  
>XXXV: Psalmist. <strong>_Gabriel tells a story.  
><em>**XXXVI: St. Peter at the Gates. **_Reuniting with a brother._**  
>XXXVII: Prodigal. <strong>_God speaks._**  
>XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. <strong>_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._**  
><strong>


	42. XXXII:Whisper

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXII: Whisper**_  
>Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.<br>After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. __  
><em>_After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  
>And after the fire came a still, small voice…and the voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"<em>**  
>1 Kings 19: 11-13<strong>

"Gabriel."

He looked up sharply, startled, and his eyes searched the strange little garden. He realized abruptly that the small, woodsy copse was actually an abandoned shrine, once well-tended and well-loved. Broken white statues gleamed in the desert moonlight: the Holy Family, and St Francis, and a dozen others which he knew by face but not by name, or whose likenesses had changed so much over the centuries that he no longer recognized them. Wilting succulents flowered in once-artfully arranged clusters, and he found himself in the middle of what had been a man-made waterfall and pool, ringed with shining flat stones. A holy place, carefully cultivated by tender hands and a God-glorying heart. Was it any wonder he'd chosen this place to surrender?

_She calls people out of their pain._

"Gabriel," she said again, and the moon played tricks on his eyes, on the flawed beauty of Bethany's face. For a moment she seemed haloed with light. Her eyes were deeper, wider, more golden, the lashes thicker and darker; her mouth was full and inviting and unruined. The scar traced her features like a lover's caress, beautiful in its own right. She gleamed in the silvery shadows: white in the darkness. Her legs were smooth and gleaming columns beneath the raggedly-cut edges of her shorts, and her hair was a fall of dark sky behind her. Her sweatshirt fell off one sloping shoulder, which shone in the moonlight.

"I am here," he told her, his voice low and rasping, almost unidentifiable. She looked like she _belonged _in this place: holy, sacred, secret.

She climbed carefully down into the dry pool: legs flashing, barefoot among the twigs and stones and parched mud. Dust licked her toes. She knelt before him, so close that the white globes of her knees settled between his fists, still clenched in the earth. For what seemed like an eternity—to Gabriel, who was intimately acquainted with eternity—they sat in silence.

"I executed my brother," he said at last, stiffly.

Her eyes sought his in the darkness.

"I," he clarified, struggling with the term, with the reality, "murdered him."

She held his gaze, unflinching.

"The dearest and—closest to me, of all my remaining brethren." He paused. "Though we were at war, he did not expect me to deal a death-blow." He wrestled for words in the darkness, and when he couldn't find them, he fell silent, aching and sodden with an anguish he couldn't give voice to.

She continued to kneel before him, a tiny and delicate gargoyle sitting on its haunches, and held his dark, glacial eyes with her own. "I miss my sister."

"Yes," he said into the darkness.

"It's so empty here."

"Yes."

"And lonely."

"Yes."

"My own shortcomings have wounded her, have cost me her; I betrayed her, and Gabriel…and I can't ever go home, and I can't _ever_ take it back, and I can't seem to make it any better."

"_Yes," _he said, and didn't recognize his own voice in the darkness, like broken thunder.

"Gabriel," she said very softly, so softly he almost didn't hear her over the roar of his own heart, "you are very, very good." Her hand came out in the darkness; her ring finger kissed his face three times: at his temple, the far corner of his jaw, the side of his chin. It was almost a caress. For a moment, silence reigned, and the conviction she had just uttered—with complete certainty, and gentleness—washed through the air like a sweet, clean, incoming tide. "You are _very_ good," she whispered. "Deep inside—where you're afraid that you're not."

Her words were crippling: he lurched toward her, and she held one arm open. Like a felled tree whose branches come down with it, he tumbled forward: hard-limbed, broken-winged. Her arms wrapped around him quickly, pulling him in toward her, welcoming him without reservation; her fingers found and gently stroked the soft hairs at the back of his neck while her other hand carefully smoothed his sharp-edged feathers. He wept as he never had before, his hands knotting in her dark hair: for all he had done, for all he had hurt, for all he had lost. She murmured things he didn't hear, but which sounded like _I have you _and _I'm here._

**Word Count: 718  
>Completed: May 27<strong>**th****, 2011  
>The "famous scene." This is an image that I (very roughly) sketched, way back when, and the link to view it is below (copy &amp; paste into your browser and remove the spaces). It's not that good, but it will give you a bit of a visual if you want it.<br>http :/ fyrefly-nyxa .deviantart .com /# /d3figm5**  
>****The title again is in conjunction with the verse, where God is found not in the wrath of wind, the power of the earthquake, or the burning of fire—but in a gentle and quiet whisper, calling the prophet's name. [c. 1 Kings 19]<p> 


	43. XXXIII: Revelations

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXIII: Revelations  
><strong>_You will find me when you seek me with all your heart._**  
>Jeremiah 29:13<strong>

When he finally woke, and rose quickly, the light that came through the dried leaves above was pearly and translucent, heavy with dawn. He brought his fingers to his face, flaking away the remaining dust and salt from the night before. Bethany was only an arm's reach away. She'd stayed with him, he realized, all night.

It moved him.

She was curled in a nest of rubbery succulents and dead grasses, at the foot of a white statue of an angel. Its head and one wing had broken off—he caught sight of them gleaming in the dead plants at its feet—but it still raised its hands in silent benediction over her sleeping form. He wondered briefly if it had been intended to be a rendering of himself, the Angel Gabriel—and if so, the irony was almost painful. In spite of his intention to protect their little travelling band, in truth—both girls had offered him more, from open hearts, than he'd ever given them.

He looked down at Bethany. It was unthinkable, in this moment, that her light might have been extinguished that dark Christmas a few scant months ago. In the night he would vow he'd felt his Father's presence shining through her—not so far away at all. Surely His spirit was within her—had been, perhaps, the whole time, in which case Gabriel had never been abandoned at all.

Unthinking—overcome—he dropped to his knees as he had once done beside his brother, when he'd first pledged his allegiance to his Father's new children. Somehow, bowed low at her side, he found the position easier than it had seemed back when man was new. Her eyes blinked open sleepily: topaz and amber and burnt umber. He could count the striations in them, and he marveled at how close he could be to her, once he had moved to his knees.

In the veiled light of dawn, he touched her hand softly where it curled against the dirt and stone, and though she said nothing—only looked at him with sleepy, perplexed eyes—he heard her voice again clearly as she leaned over her sister in the dark:

_This is where I find God._

**Word Count: 370  
>Completed: May 28<strong>**th****, 2011  
>This chapter is dedicated to Tacy137, for hope.<strong>

**Coming Soon:  
>Interlude IX: Hemmed. <strong>_ "You are searching for a reason for the apocalypse." "Among other things."_**  
>XXXIV: Metatron. <strong>_Gabriel is called home._**  
>XXXV: Psalmist. <strong>_Gabriel tells a story.  
><em>**XXXVI: St. Peter at the Gates. **_Reuniting with a brother._**  
>XXXVII: Prodigal. <strong>_God speaks._**  
>XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. <strong>_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._

****Biblically, _revelations_ might refer to the book at the end of the Christian canon (Revelation), which foretells Armageddon (according to some belief systems). The word literally means something like…a mystery "revealed," or coming to know or understand a secret.


	44. Interlude IX: Hemmed

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Interlude: Hemmed**_  
>Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.<br>She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.  
>Then she will say, "I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now."<em>**  
>Hosea 2: 6-7<strong>

He found her perched atop the roof of the car, a heavy book in her lap.

She didn't look up. "I found this in the last house we were in," she said, and lifted it. He saw it was leather, and the cover was stamped with the words HOLY BIBLE. "I was looking for a certain verse, a certain prophecy. Do you know where it is? God talks about—isolating Jerusalem, hemming it in, until its people can only turn to Him."

He slid a hand sideways to indicate a vague dismissal. "I do not know the Book by verses and page numbers," he said, and she chuckled wryly from her perch.

"Why read the Word when you can hear it directly?" she suggested lightly, and he felt an unfamiliar twitch at the corner of his mouth. It was a strange sensation and he touched his lip wonderingly, but Bethany still had not looked up.

"Why do you pursue this particular passage?" he asked.

"I was thinking about it yesterday, after…" she trailed off, and he knew she meant the night in the abandoned shrine, when he had wept in a dried-out pool, and she had slept at the foot of a broken angel. He had felt—lighter since that night, and also more anchored. The void that had filled him since being turned from Heaven had not disappeared entirely, but the edges had smoothed over. He thought he was not so alienated as he had once believed—surely his Father had been present that night, when His archangel and His scarred daughter had held each other in that abandoned shrine and holy place, when he had finally embraced his own deep sorrow, and felt regret not for the pain he caused his Father but for the pain he had caused in general. _Surely_ He had been there.

As He surely had every moment before.

Gabriel no longer felt purposeless, but focused, intent. Father had given him some respite, some precious gift in Bethany and her sister—a brief, bright memory of Joy—and he would not squander them.

"I remember hearing somewhere that it's, well, literal—but also that it's how God works in our individual lives too. He isolates us from all our escapes until we're—compelled to turn to Him. For our comfort, for our needs, for everything."

"It is so," he acknowledged.

"What do you suppose He means to accomplish by turning us away?" she asked softly.

He started. He had never turned the question this way, had never examined it from the opposing angle. "It is abandonment," he said, and then shook his head, because he knew—especially after the other night in the sacred, dying shrine—that such a thing wasn't so.

She shook her head as well, and now she did look at him. He thought even the starkness of her scar was strangely beautiful. _What caused this?_ he'd asked once, and she'd answered, _Love._

"When He turns us away from all other escapes so that we might return to Him, it makes me think that He only turns us away from Himself so that we are forced to turn to each other."

Gabriel blinked.

"To remember to value each other, to love each other, to cherish our human relationships as well." I think sometimes"—and he thought here that perhaps she was speaking of Joy—"sometimes we have to lose the things we love in order to really see them, to really love them, to…draw closer to the source of them."

"You are still searching for a reason for Armageddon?" he asked in bewilderment, and she eyed him with a familiar and unexpected shrewdness.

"Among other things," she echoed, and shrugged. "I'm sure it's all much more complicated than my feeble human brain can imagine, but…yes. I'm searching for a reason."

"And you still have faith that there _is _a reason, and that the decision was not made in cruelty or rejection?" he asked wonderingly, though of course she was right. Her family had been taken, her face had been wounded, her sister had been brutally stolen long after the danger was _supposed _to be over, and yet—_and yet—_

_He's a _loving _God, _she'd said once, and _Sometimes you have to break a thing down before you can put it back together as it was meant to be. _

The realization came slowly, like dawn.

"You are searching for a reason for my exile," he said abruptly, and the words were out of his mouth before he could second-guess them—but he knew them to be true.

She ignored his assertion, laughing instead. "Of course I still have faith," she teased, answering his previous question. "I don't know if you noticed, Gabriel, but I tend to hold on past all reason."

_She sucks at knowing when to let go, _Joy had said, and still further in the past he heard Bethany's voice: _We can't give up on the things we love—nothing is more certain to destroy us. _

**Word Count: 836  
>Completed: May 30<strong>**th****, 2011  
>Apologies to all those who might have received multiple copies of the same PM from me. Sigh. I am struggling with the new private-messaging system here on . I would like to thank you all, again, for such incredibly lovely reviews. Sometimes it can be disheartening to receive so few reviewsfavorites for a piece you've poured your heart into when your other, less-thoughtful and less-meaningful 'fics get a lot of attention. But the comments people have sent me for this story have just been mind-bogglingly considerate, thoughtful, evocative, kind, sweet, and personal. Thank you all for the time you've taken to really tell me what you think of this story and to encourage and inspire me throughout the posting of it.  
>In other news, I imagine the end of this story will be posted inside of a week. Upcoming chapters are as follows:<strong>

**XXXIV: Metatron. **_Gabriel is called home._**  
>XXXV: Psalmist. <strong>_Gabriel tells a story.  
><em>**XXXVI: St. Peter at the Gates. **_Reuniting with a brother._**  
>XXXVII: Prodigal. <strong>_God speaks._**  
>XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. <strong>_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._


	45. XXXIV: Metatron

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXIV: Metatron**_  
>The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, "Samuel! Samuel!"<em>**  
>1 Samuel 3: 10<strong>

"One more day, I think," Bethany said when Gabriel approached her. The map rustled in her lap, spread out like a blanket. "I think if I drive a couple extra hours tonight and wake up early, we can be there by dawn; watch the sun rise—Gabriel?" She had looked up, seen the expression on his face: subtle, under the smooth lines, but it was there nonetheless. He was strained, and holding himself back, and there was something of joy and amazement and regret in his eyes.

"I am being Called," he said wonderingly. "…Home."

"Oh," she said softly, and looked down at her hands on the map. She folded it. "I'm very happy for you."

He gazed at her measuringly and she was struck again by the lightning-blue of his eyes, like sun lancing off dark glaciers, like volcanoes at midnight. "You are," he said after a moment, and somehow he still sounded awestruck. Her heart quivered, that he would find so much pleasure and astonishment in his Father, in Heaven. It hurt, but she was glad for it nonetheless. "And you are not surprised."

She laughed then, and hoped it covered the ache in her heart. "Of course not—how could I be?" She dropped her voice to a confiding, teasing whisper. "Gabriel, I prayed for you every night."

Some strange light filled his eyes; she watched as every plane and angle of his face –usually so intense, even at rest—suddenly softened into something infinitely gentle. Even the sad lines of his mouth grew tender and sweet. She didn't know what it meant, or what he was thinking; she only knew the sight of it made her own eyes sting.

"Bethany," he said, and his voice was strangely reverent. "You will be all alone…yet you pray for my return home anyway?"

She sniffled ingloriously, in spite of herself, then managed a tremulous smile. "Don't be a dope," she said. "Anyway, I'm not really alone, am I?" But the yawning hole in her heart said otherwise. "I'm curious though," she added tentatively, afraid to cling to him but yearning, still. "What this means, I mean. For us—for me. It's selfish, I know, but—will you leave right away? Will I ever see you again?"

There was a pause, and he seemed to be measuring his words. "We will see the canyon together at dawn first," he told her at last, firmly. "And then—I would hope you might wait for me there."

She blinked, and something like hope blossomed where her stomach had felt empty and tight a moment before. It was so unexpected she didn't recognize it at first. "But—" _But you have been away from heaven so long, _she wanted to say, and _Aren't you eager to leave right now? _and _Why would you come back to this place that you hate?_

"Bethany," he interrupted, his voice as strong and low and unstoppable as distant thunder. "I will come for you."

**Word Count: 497  
>Completed: June 1<strong>**st****, 2011**

**XXXV: Psalmist. **_Gabriel tells a story.  
><em>**XXXVI: St. Peter at the Gates. **_Reuniting with a brother._**  
>XXXVII: Prodigal. <strong>_God speaks._**  
>XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. <strong>_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._

****_Metatron _is said to be the name of the angel who acts as the "voice of God," because His voice is too grand for humans to hear or comprehend.


	46. XXXV: Psalmist

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXV: Psalmist**_  
>Therefore I am now going to allure her;<br>I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her._**  
>Hosea 15: 14<strong>

"Oh," said Bethany. _"Oh."_

She had climbed the safety railing—made brave, perhaps, by the presence of an archangel beside her. She leaned out as far as she dared over the edge of the canyon, then dropped to her knees in a crouch and curled her fingers at the edge.

"How lovely," she marveled, and her words were hushed and reverent.

Staring out over the fleecy golden sands, the stones, Gabriel said solemnly, "Michael once said that each of Father's creations were lovelier than the last." Bethany smiled faintly, but there was a bittersweet and wistful light in her coppery eyes.

"Was this"—she gestured to the canyon—"toward the end of the list?" She wore the sad, strangely inviting warmth he had grown to know her for, made particularly poignant in the wake of her sister's absence. He had known this moment would be bittersweet for her, and wondered if she imagined she could feel Joy's presence, here in this place.

"No," he said simply. "First there was darkness. Then—holy light and fire and water. And angels."

"I think Genesis skipped that bit," she teased.

Again, he felt the unfamiliar tug at the corner of his mouth, but he ignored her jest. "Then He formed from those elements the stars and suns and moons and planets, the spinning galaxies, the orchestra of a revolving universe. And on them he crafted rivers—mountains—volcanoes and glaciers. Each was more complicated and graceful and wild."

"…Wow," Bethany breathed, and though he thought at first she was mocking him, a quick glance told him otherwise. "It's…different, to hear you tell it. The sound of your voice. It seems more—real. And holy."

"Good," he said, and she laughed. He raised an eyebrow, and she dissolved into giggles at the decidedly human gesture. Her mirth touched him, bubbled over—and it was enough that he gave way to the unfamiliar pull at his lips, which immediately halted her laughter. For the first time since he'd met her, he thought she looked like a girl who had seen an archangel.

He didn't take time to puzzle over her expression, however. The call home was strong and clean and bright. Instead, he said: "Then living things. I remember: the delight He took in each cell—loving, devoted, pleased. It strengthened me to know he had created me with infinitely more ardor and delight."

She let out a faint and happy sigh—the first he had heard since Joy's death. "And then?"

"After the plants came the birds and the fishlike things, each strange and lovely. Fins, feathers, wings, scales—beaks and teeth and eggs and eyes. Life that generates life. Some with long tails, or colors that glowed in the sun, each fierce and wondrous. It was all meant to be a gift for his favored ones."

"Us," she breathed, as though it was unimaginable. He remembered that he had once thought the same thing; now it seemed unfathomable, that he could doubt a human's worth—_her _worth—her complicated beauty.

"Yes," he said. "But before you, there were land-animals, with fur and legs and muzzles, and warm blood and heavy bones. Everything was laid out in preparation. And _then_—mankind."

She smiled. "And the rest was history," she said lightly. "It's strange to hear the story from someone who was—actually there."

He looked at her strangely. "That is not the end of the story."

"Well, no," she reasoned. "_In the beginning, _right? I mean, it's only the start. Of forever."

He frowned. "You misunderstand. Mankind was not the final creation."

She tilted her head, her eyes narrow with confusion, and he huffed his disappointment. "You know this story, Bethany," he chided gently. "What is the final and most glorious creation?"

"The seventh day of rest?" she answered weakly.

"_Woman," _he said quietly, and she caught her breath at the softness in his voice, like a sky wrapped in thunder. "We are men and angels, Bethany, but—I have learned, since coming here…there is something uniquely godlike about a woman. So much beauty, and grace. If we are reflections of His warrior nature, then you are the embodiment of everything that is generous in His heart."

She was silent, staring into the canyon, one slender hand pressed to her throat as though his words themselves had lodged there. Perhaps they had—he imagined it was one of the longest speeches he'd ever made in her presence.

"I do not want to leave," he said at last, and each word tasted like a stone in his mouth. "Not even for a day. I have learned much about humans from you, and about my Father, and about myself." He hesitated. "I believe I have come to learn to love you, Bethany."

"I've heard it's occasionally a hazard of the job," she said seriously. He saw in her an attempt to exercise lightness in order to protect her sudden vulnerability. "Hang out with us humans long enough and—we kind of grow on you." She paused, then added lightly, "Besides, I _am_ rather charming."

He pursed his lips at her levity, then relaxed—and rasped, "I have become particularly enamored of _you_."

Something of his heart must have crept into his words: her head snapped around so she could stare at him, sharp-eyed and soft-lipped, but he took to the skies before she could form the question that was waiting on her mouth like a kiss.

**Word Count: 910  
>Completed: June 2<strong>**nd****, 2011  
>I love this chapter. I hope it strikes a chord with everyone else too. Almost done…we're in the home stretch.<strong>

**Coming Soon:  
>XXXVI: St. Peter at the Gates. <strong>_Reuniting with a brother._**  
>XXXVII: Prodigal. <strong>_God speaks._**  
>XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. <strong>_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._

****This title is a little more convoluted than most others. I just thought of Gabriel telling the story of Creation here—and how beautifully he would tell it—and it made me think of Kind David, the writer of psalms. [c. Psalms]


	47. XXVI: Saint Peter At the Gates

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXVI: Saint Peter at the Gates**_  
>And he who sits on the throne said,<br>"Behold! I make all things new."_**  
>Revelation 21: 5<strong>

He had expected to meet Michael at the Gates—had prepared his heart for it, in fact. He knew the bittersweet compassion in his brother's eyes would be harder to bear than his condemnation.

But the form that awaited him, silhouetted against Heaven's radiance, was far smaller and sprightlier, wingless.

"Gabriel," she laughed, unrestrained, and the dark gold of her eyes was so full of wild glory, so utterly free of sorrow, that he did not recognize her at first. She was still _the same girl, _but death—and heaven, and God—had drawn the darkness out of her eyes and let something loose in her, something wilder and stronger and glowing.

_Sometimes you have to tear a thing apart in order to rebuild it the way it was meant to be._

She rushed at him.

He retreated quickly, inexplicably frightened—that this was a fantasy, that this moment was not real, that she wasn't here and strong and full of light. She moved in again and he flinched backward once more, his heart achingly full: of hope, and yearning—and fear.

Then she leapt upon him, and his tears spilled over before he even knew they were there. He crushed her against his armor, lifting her feet off the stones, pressing her into his chest and breathing her in, murmuring breathless prayers of gratitude into her hair and weeping at this new yet familiar creature in his arms.

"Oh, welcome home," Joy breathed against him quaveringly. "Big brother, _welcome home_."

**Word Count: 251  
>Completed: June 5<strong>**th  
>One of my shortest and most favorite chapters.<br>I am sure all of you would like a longer glimpse at this reunion, but that's not the purpose of this chapter. The purpose was instead to pinpoint one moment, which not only shows a glimpse of the love between these two adopted siblings, but –hopefully—shows **_**why**_** Joy died. **

**XXXVII: Prodigal. **_God speaks._**  
>XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. <strong>_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._

****This title refers to the traditional assertion that St Peter sits at the Gates of Heaven with a Book of Judgement, and when you arrive, he finds your name in the Book and decides whether or not you are worthy to enter.


	48. XXXVII: Prodigal

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXVII: Prodigal**  
>…<em>While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.<em>**  
>Luke 15: 20<br>**_One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard:  
>that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving.<em>**  
>Psalm 62: 11-12<strong>

It was hours—if Heaven measured such a thing—before he could bring himself to leave Joy's side. Still, their shared time was too short. Only the knowledge of Bethany waiting for him—only the realization that he could assure her, now, of her sister's newness and wholeness—encouraged him to leave Joy and rush to the floor before his Father's throne.

For a moment, he simply savored the warmth of Heaven, letting the sensation of praise and fervent joy wash over his skin. It was a physical sensation: fierce, sweet, and stronger for his long absence. He'd missed it.

And yet part of him recognized that it was stronger for other reasons as well. He thought perhaps he had not fully appreciated the brightness of it, the ardor of true devotion, for millennia. Only now, experienced in the wake of human mercy and human grief, could he remember—

"Father," Gabriel said quietly, when he finally opened his eyes. "I seek an audience."

**You are welcome here, My son, **his Father responded gently. **You are always welcome here.**

Gabriel felt a tremor of warmth, of solemn adoration. He was certain his eyes shone with it. Of course his Father would send Joy to greet him—would send her with elated embraces and freedom in her eyes, because He would know what it would mean to his lost son. It was a gesture of simplicity, of love, of mercy.

**I see there has been a change in you.**

"Yes, Father." The angel paused and breathed deeply. "I wish—to abide on earth for a while."

There was a pause. The ongoing praise of the heavenly host broke apart briefly, rippling like a stream around a stone before reconvening in _hallelujahs _once more.

**Ah, My son,** the Lord sighed. Gabriel could not decipher the tone in his voice. **What has wrought this in you?**

"There is a human girl. She has become…" he groped for words. _Friend _was too careless a word; even _family_ did not seem to encompass the brightness of it. "…holy to me. Sacrosanct. I have—much to learn from her."

**Even yet?** Father asked lightly. **It seems you have already learned more than some might have expected.**

Humility burned Gabriel's cheeks, but he did not lower his head. He knew that Father saw everything already, clearly—including his innermost heart—and his only hesitation came from baring it before the rest of the angelic host around them. Besides, the Father who considered himself a bridegroom to His people surely would not shy away from a term like _lovers._

"Father," he said, "she is precious to me. Beloved."

There was a sense of doubt—no; a sense of being tested. **You do not find her disfigurement unsettling?**

"She is _wholly_ lovely to me,"Gabriel answered without hesitation.

Though the words came readily to his lips, unbidden, he found himself surprised nonetheless. It was the truth, but when had it become so? He remembered: once, he had found her hideous, and then had decided it was the scar alone that was hideous. Later, he had found her lovely in spite of it. But now—now he thought her lovely _because_ of it, too.

Father remained silent, and Gabriel's wings rippled just enough to send the sound of chiming daggers and whispering feathers through the air. Uncomfortably, the archangel said abruptly: "While I have learned some share of"—here he stumbled over the word—"of compassion from her, I know there is more I have yet to understand."

**You have learned compassion, Gabriel? **Father said, and Gabriel was relieved to hear him speak again. **And if I asked you tomorrow to lead the host once more in Armageddon—?**

He shook his head. "Father, I would beg you to spare them, if only for her." Those words spilled forth easily, and he lowered his eyes. And yet, there was more to it than this. _You are made to be worthy,_ he had told Bethany once, and afterward had wondered if it were not so of all mankind.

**I am reminded of Sodom and Gomorrah,** the Father said, and once more Gabriel struggled to decipher his tone. **Did I not send you with your brother, to find for me even ten righteous men?**

"You did, Father." He hesitated. He remembered clearly: Lot and his wide-eyed daughters, the faces of the men who had thought, in their foolishness, to harm the angels of God themselves. There had only been _one_ righteous man in that city, and while Michael had pleaded for the population's security, Gabriel had only dispatched Lot's family to safety, conveying them coldly to the borders of town before turning to help his melancholic brother mete out God's fiery wrath. Michael might have been impressed by the man's willingness to sacrifice his own offspring, but Gabriel had only felt cold disdain. And the woman, he remembered, had looked back; had seen the glory of angels in the way that human eyes were never meant to perceive, and it had burnt her up from the inside out. He had glimpsed her, later: a crumbling and fragile statue made of dried tears.

"I realize"—Gabriel hesitated once more—"that Bethany would not be happy without others with whom to share her life." He thought of Joy, her eyes bright and eager; he thought of wishing he had been able to call her back from the edge of death—and then he thought of the girl who locked her arms around him on Christmas, who sacrificed herself for the safety of a holy Child. "And—where there is one worth saving, perhaps there are more."

Father scrutinized him**. I see,** He said. **You have learned other things as well, My son. Things I had feared were lost.**

Gabriel closed his eyes, humbled. "Father," he acknowledged, "I have learned—_family. _What you intended for it to mean, or some small piece of it. I had thought that I understood—filial piety, and the bond of brothers, that in Your presence…" He trailed away for a moment, then continued, "But I was wrong. I no longer recognized it—I could not even see it. I allowed my desire to save You from heartbreak and my ardor to win a place as Your favored son—"

**Gabriel,** Father interrupted, and His voice was vaguely disappointed, but also—_fierce_. **After all this time, you still think I favor one son over another?**

The archangel bowed his head, ashamed of his own frailty, his own inability to comprehend the true scope of his Father's boundless grace.

**Gabriel,** God said, and then repeated Himself. _**Gabriel**_**. I have called you by name—and you alone. There are none like you. You are My precious, precious son, and the love I bear you is entirely different from the love I bear Michael, or Uriel, or any of your brothers. You are unique among angels, Gabriel, as My love for you is unique. I will move the heavens for any **_**one**_** of My children—I will fight for you, and against you, however it might better you. I will risk it all for you, Gabriel. **

**For**_** you, **_**Gabriel.**

There was a long moment, and for a moment Gabriel allowed the words to seep into his skin. He could feel that they meant something more than he could immediately place—and then he sucked in a breath, and it was stark and sweet with realization. What miracle of genetics had resulted in a lineage from Eve to Bethany, to Joy? What miracle of circumstances had isolated each of them, then led them to each other in the desert—that they might bring comfort and strength to each other, that they might set about healing each others' wounds?

"This is what You meant to happen," Gabriel said slowly. "When You closed the gates of heaven to me—and even from The Beginning—Father—"

He fell silent for a moment, overwhelmed by the depth and precision of his Father's love. When he had thought himself abandoned, God had only been crafting a way to bring him home.

His eyes stung and his mouth tightened, but he lifted his head, unashamed of his tears. They cut streams down the angled planes of his face.

**My ways **_**are **_**mysterious,** Father said, and He sounded both very satisfied and very amused.

_Sometimes you have to tear a thing apart in order to put it back together the way it was meant to be, _Bethany had said once, and: _Perhaps He turns us away so that we will turn to each other. _A thought unfurled inside him, and his throat clenched with the ruthless bittersweetness of it. In a low voice, Gabriel asked, "Was the whole of the apocalypse merely leading up to this moment?"

For a moment, Father was silent. **No,** he said at last, **and yes.** It was the prerogative of God to be so contrary, Gabriel knew—only He could say both words and mean them each entirely. With sudden gentleness, He asked, in a tender and almost-beseeching tone:

**Gabriel—does not the Shepherd leave his ninety-nine sheep in search of the one who is lost?**

And Gabriel saw Bethany's penny-colored eyes, full of honey and light and awe, and the way she reassured herself: _Oh. Oh. _As though each utterance brought with it a new wave of revelation. His throat closed completely for a moment; he swallowed around the tightness there.

**Gabriel, **Father said, and there was something fiery and pleased in His eyes. **You tell me you choose to stay with her. I see what this means to you: that you will trust the heart I placed inside you, and delight in her, and be her companion and champion. And so I am certain there is something else you have learned in your time on earth, something of which you have not yet spoken.**

"Yes," Gabriel rasped out, overcome. "Yes." And he thought of Michael, holding him desperately in the darkness of the diner; he thought of Father, holding on to hope for His children, _needing _it, needing _them. _He thought of the girl who held him desperately on the night of the apocalypse, trying to save a Child. He thought of Bethany holding Joy in the darkness and blood, and he thought of himself holding Bethany while she struggled—too late—to save her dead sister.

**What is it, My son?**

"We must not give up on the things we love," Gabriel said quietly, holding his Father's eyes with great solemnity and an achingly full heart. "Nothing is more certain to destroy us."

**Word Count: 1,770  
>Completed: June 5<strong>**th****, 2011  
>So, turns out, WRITING GOD'S VOICE IS HARD.<br>This chapter went something like this: write, edit, struggle; write, struggle, struggle, struggle; edit, struggle, edit.  
>I am hoping you are pleased with this exchange. It was where the story was always heading, so I hope it brings some measure of satisfaction and comfort.<strong>

**XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. **_Another reunion._**  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. <strong>_Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._

****This title is probably pretty well-known, but I will explain anyway. Itrefers to the parable of the prodigal son, who decided to leave his father in search of his own fortune and ended up returning home, humbled, to beg forgiveness and ask for work in his father's home. Instead, his father is overjoyed at the sight of him, welcomes him in, and calls everyone to celebrate his son's return with joyful feasting and merriment. [c. Luke 15]


	49. XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben**_  
>What are brothers for if not to share troubles?<em>**  
>Proverbs 17:17<strong>

"It is not so bad, is it, brother?" Michael asked. His voice rang out just as Gabriel was preparing to descend, and the stoic archangel froze on the edge of Heaven, waiting. "It is not so bad—living among them. Like them. Living _with _them."

"Not so bad," Gabriel echoed only, but his mind was on Bethany's tremulous smile, her shining penny-bright eyes. Not so bad at all, but far more terrible and far more beautiful than he'd ever imagined.

He paused on the edge of Heaven, preparing to leap, and looked into his brother's eyes. He had expected mercy, a painful and undeserved sort of love. What he hadn't expected was _this:_

wry understanding, and a wistful sort of pleasure, and the kind of soft sorrow he had seen on Bethany's face a hundred times while she touched her sister's face and thought of how she'd almost lost her. For a moment, they were silent, and then Michael said quietly, "I _missed _you, brother."

And somehow Gabriel understood that Michael did not mean _I missed you since the Gates were closed to you, _or even, _I missed you since I Fell. _Instead, he was saying—_I've missed you, brother, ever since Sammael left us._

His own throat closed as he considered how the rift between them had grown over the centuries: subtly, disguised at first as something else until it had seemed far too late to ever go back. And indeed, they _hadn't _gone back, had they? They'd both gone forward, and ended up side-by-side in the end.

Michael must have seen something in his own eyes, because he held his brother's gaze evenly. "I am sorry, Gabriel."

Well, he certainly hadn't been expecting _that, _either. The rustling of his wings betrayed his confusion, a faint chiming hidden between the whispery sounds of feathers-on-feathers.

Michael didn't so much as blink. "I am sorry," he repeated, "that I left you to fight your heart-wound alone. I did not know how—" He broke off and swallowed thickly, for a moment more vulnerable than Gabriel had perhaps ever seen him. Michael's eyes sharpened with poignancy, with meaning, in that deeply intimate way that he alone seemed to have inherited from their Father. "It was not brotherly of me, Gabriel."

Deep inside himself, Gabriel stilled. Every roiling thought became crisp and beautiful with clarity, as though the edges of the world had suddenly reconvened into some semblance of sense and meaning. The chasm in his heart no longer seemed so wide and deep and far. His hand reached out across it, and Michael met it halfway, clasping forearms in a half-salute that managed, somehow, to transform itself midway into a half-embrace. "I am no stranger to wronging a brother," Gabriel said after a moment, and was surprised at the hoarseness of his own low voice. "I do regret, Michael, striking you down in the desert."

"We have both executed each other," Michael responded, his voice muffled in the larger angel's shoulder. "I simply took longer to do it."

Reluctantly, Gabriel released him—but oddly, he felt fullness rather than loss. Once, he might've chosen to stay: with his Father, with Michael, with Joy. But eternity was so long, and human lives were _so short_, and the bright beacons of Bethany's eyes were calling him back. Calling him _home._

He was only too eager to go.

"Visit soon, Gabriel," the other archangel said suddenly, his voice suddenly lighter and more laughing than Gabriel had heard in centuries. "You may have missed _my _homecoming feast, but I hear tell of a fatted calf with your name on it."

Gabriel snorted inelegantly. "Your humor ever leaves something to be desired, brother."

Michael laughed then, and slapped him on the back—_hard, _as brothers sometimes do—and watched with a grin as Gabriel staggered over the edge.

**Word Count: 641  
>Completed: June 5<strong>**th****, 2011  
>I am sure someone somewhere was hoping for more of a reunion, both for GabrielJoy and Gabriel/Michael. But I wanted to keep them short and sweet or, perhaps more accurately, **_**they **_**wanted to be kept short and sweet. It was difficult, because there were very specific things I wanted to accomplish in each of these bookend-reunions. In **_**Saint Peter at the Gates**_**, the goal was to catch a glimpse of Joy's complete freedom from her ghosts, here in heaven—and also to reflect on a level of hopeful fear, or fearful hope, in Gabriel himself, at the culmination of their tearful reunion. In this installment—**_**Joseph, Reuben—**_**I wanted to show a gesture of brotherly camaraderie branching the rift between these two brothers. It might seem "too easy," but I **_**wanted **_**it to be easy. Gabriel has already gone through the process of forgiving both his brother and himself, and Michael is too remarkably similar to Bethany to hold it against him. Also, personally, I have a tendency to believe that a sibling bond is far too strong a thing to be easily undone by something as simple as death.**

**The previous installment, complete with **THE VOICE OF GOD, **received mixed responses. That's okay. :) Before I began writing, I felt like everyone and their dog in the Legion fandom was angry at God. I was too, when I watched the movie...less because of the people-massacre and more because I felt so bad for Gabriel, haha. But my greatest downfall/awesomeness in movie-watching (and the thing that often prevents me from responding to films in the way I am "supposed" to) is a desire to figure out _why. _And my question here wasn't, _Why did God kill want to kill everyone?_ but _Why does God turn away his most obedient child? _(which I felt like was almost implicit at the end of the movie). In _Legion _fanfiction, especially when we write about Gabriel, we are trying to spin the socialized response to "villain" on its head. I felt like that role reversal should be available for all characters-including God himself. A different perspective, if you will. And it doesn't mean you have to like God's reasoning, or agree with it, or say, "Oh, well then, that's just peachy." It doesn't mean it's _okay. _It's just another version of the story.**

In summary, I guess, I didn't want to write the story everyone else was writing...but even more importantly, the _story_ didn't want to be written that way. And if it wasn't your cup of tea-if you were expecting something different, something a little more...gloating, perhaps?...that's not what this piece was meant for. But I hope that you find things within the story to enjoy anyway, things that bring hope.

**Last two installments coming soon, my friends. I believe they shall be uploaded at the same time. I only hope you find in them a fitting conclusion, one that satisfies the heart.  
>XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away<strong>._ Gabriel comes home._**  
>Epilogue: Seventh Day. <strong>_A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden._

***The title _Joseph, Reuben _refers to the story of Joseph (of technicolored dream-coat fame) being betrayed and sold into slavery by his older brothers. Only Reuben tried to protect him, and it is thanks to Reuben that Joseph was not killed at the hands of his other siblings. [c. Genesis 37]


	50. XXXIX: The Stone Is Rolled Away

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Chapter XXXIX: The Stone Is Rolled Away**_  
>The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.<br>Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy._**  
>Isaiah 35: 1-2<strong>

It was night when he arrived, and he found her sleeping on a broken porch swing on a storefront in the nearby tourist-town. As though she felt his presence, she stirred and opened her eyes. The wastelands were silvered with nighttime shadows and shivering light; he knew he cut a frighteningly stark and sacred figure of reflecting metal and razored wings.

Even so, he thought of all the things his Father had created, and none were as precious or radiant as Bethany's face when she saw him standing in the starlit sand. Her eyes, her brow, her mouth; her narrow, vivid scar—not ruining her face at all but setting her apart, marking her as infinitely more lovely than he would ever have imagined—and the way her gaze opened to him, vulnerable and wondering, full of longing and a sweet, piercing kind of hope—

"Bethany," he said only, aching with the wanting of her, and she all but tumbled from the swing, leaping over the steps of the porch, her bare feet kicking up small clouds of crystal-bright sand in the moonlight. Her arms reached for him, welcoming him into her embrace, and he lifted her and wondered how he had ever yearned for Heaven instead. "I am here," he told her, when he thought he felt a tear fall on his forearm. And perhaps he had, but he would never know—because the clouds had suddenly rolled in and brought with them silver rain, and thunder, and new life into the desert.

She laughed, and tipped her face up to the falling sky, and the raindrops sparkled on her brow and her lashes. Her arms had somehow wound around his neck as though they were at home there, and her feet swung above the sand. She was gasping with joy, and relief, and thankfulness, and it filled every space inside him.

"Come," he beckoned. "We have other places to be."

"Where will we go?" she asked, breathlessly pleased, her arms still clinging to him.

_Where, indeed._

"Everywhere," he told her solemnly, putting her back on her feet—though he did not let her go. "I intend to show you all of my Father's Creation."

She laughed again, with more exuberance than he could bear, and in the rain he pressed his mouth reverently to the place on her brow where her scar began. She grew very, very still, her bright eyes wide and almost frightened-looking—as though to move might shatter the moment. After a brief instant of solemn consideration, he took her stillness as an opportunity, and brushed his mouth against both of her eyelids, and then the place where her scar furrowed her lip. She shuddered in his hands, and he thought of the day her sister had died—but he was very certain that this shudder was wholly different in nature.

"We will leave as soon as you choose," he told her. "There is one place in particular which I wish for you to see before the autumn comes."

**Word Count: 504  
>Completed: June 11<strong>**th****, 2011**  
>****This title refers to the opening of Jesus' tomb on the day of his resurrection. The idea of it—which I hope was echoed by the rain in the desert, and so on—is that life is renewed, and death is overcome: not only of the body but of the spirit and heart. [c. Luke 24, Mark 16, Matthew 28, John 20]<p> 


	51. Epilogue: Seventh Day orA Note of Hope

**Title: **Tongues of Men and Angels  
><strong>Rating: <strong>TA for implied?romance.**  
>Summary: <strong>Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.**  
>Disclaimer: <strong>*obligatory insert*

**Epilogue: Seventh Day  
>(or, <strong>_**A Note of Hope**_**)**_  
>God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.<em>**  
>Genesis 1:31<strong>

It was summer.

In the desert, it might have been hard to tell, but here the world was teeming with life. The sky was colored rose and aqua and lime, and the earth was spotted with small flowers and sweet mosses. The air was cool and breezy, and it tasted of melted snow and ocean salt. A killdeer fluttered its wings convincingly, decided they were no threat, and gave up the charade to run back to its spotted nest. Out past the glittering bay, a pod of whales breached. Their music filled the air, low and humming.

"Oh," said Bethany. "_Oh_."

Gabriel stood behind her and she leaned back against him. Her hand sought his; the Alaskan breeze flirted with her striped scarf and the burnt-caramel banner of her hair.

"You find it lovely?" Gabriel prompted. "It is all you hoped?"

Her smile, endearingly lopsided and warm, slanted up at him. He sucked in a breath at the poignancy of it, the gift of it.

"Much more than that," she told him, and he felt his heart swell. Every day, it seemed, he was surprised anew by the capacity for expansion that his Father had crafted into it. "I love you, Gabriel," she said softly, and he let his free hand linger over the curve of her hip, reveling in the warmth of her, the nearness, the pleasure of her presence.

"As I love you," he said, and in his heart he heard Joy's dry and teasing voice, the voice of a beautiful and haunted girl who had seen the truth long before either of them had possessed the courage to look for it:  
><em>Not <em>quite _as you love me, Gabe._

"What about you, Gabriel?" Bethany asked, her voice as light as the wind, and as teasing. "Is it lovely? Is it everything _you_ hoped?"

He looked down at the crown of her head—pressed his mouth reverently into her hair as though it were a prayer. All he could see was her.

"It is good," he said softly. "It is very good."

"_For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord,  
>"plans to help you and not to harm you,<br>plans to give you hope and a future."_**  
>Jeremiah 29:11<strong>

_**fin.**_

**Word Count: 343  
>Completed: June 11<strong>**th****, 2011  
>I promised I would end this piece on "a note of hope," and for those of you who haven't noticed, that is—in fact—the alternate title to this epilogue.<strong> **** The "Seventh Day" is, of course, the Sabbath; that is, it is the day after Creation was finished, and God saw that it was _very _good (a variation on the previous verses, where it was "only" _good_) , and so He rested. _This_ Seventh Day is about the culmination of Creation; it is about restfulness; it is about goodness—and it is also about a pair of lovers, precious to God, enjoying the gift of a beautiful garden once more. [c. Genesis 1-2]

**It has been a strange and unexpectedly beautiful ride, and I am deeply and profoundly grateful to you all for joining me in it. I hope it had brought you as much enjoyment to read it as it has brought me to write it.  
>To all readers, even the silent lurking ones, thank you for your time and support. Even knowing you're there, thanks to the story stats, is gratifying and encouraging.<br>To reviewers at large: you have honestly made this journey so much more intimate that I ever expected it to be. Your kind and often unbelievably thoughtful comments left me speechless with wonder many times, and encouraged and inspired me to write not just with an enjoyment of words and characters, but from an honest heart as well. **

**There are a few people I would like to thank individually, in alphabetical order. I wish I could do this for everyone whose encouragement has moved me, but that might take longer than the story itself. Nevertheless:**

**General Zargon, **_for joining me in a different fandom and getting to know my new characters, and for admitting that you have come to love at least one of them. Also for putting away the pancake launcher. :)_

**Greenwood Elf, **_for actually taking the time to explore my own story in spite of your busy-ness and the time you have spent crafting your own beautiful fanfiction. It's an honor. :)_

**Saichick, **_for constant kindnesses and encouragement. I am so glad you stumbled across this fic!_

**Lamminator—**_for drooling with me over Gabe—and for tattoo-talk! :)_

**Maladicta, **_for many kind and generous reviews, including (but not limited to) the private message which I think of as "The Infamous and Inspiring 40-Chapter Review," in which you listed your favorite lines for each of the first forty installments of this fanfiction. It was beautiful and kind and thoughtful and, I'm sure, time-consuming; I have saved it to my harddrive and use it to inspire me when I am worried that I am not phrasing things properly. It was so incredibly moving to read, and I am still touched when I think of it. And for crying at Joy's death. And also, of course, for inspiring a certain delicious chapter involving a half-naked and slightly-drenched Gabe…_

**Moshey. **_I wanted to respond to the beautiful and kind review you left me, but your private messaging system is turned off. So here, I will thank you for your kindness, and for your continued persistence in reading a non-Audrey _Legion _fanfiction. I'm so glad the characters managed to somehow capture you, as so touched that you stayed with us. (Also, I did try to include as many nods to Audrey as I could reasonably do here—she is, I think, the one human who haunts him most from Armageddon). This story was supposed to unfold, like a flower, and it sounds like it was successful for you, and I am so grateful and glad that you took the time to tell me so. "Little miracles of love"—such high praise. Thank you, thank you._

**Nothing New In This World: **_for warm sunrays from Southern France, and for a few incredibly-enjoyable exchanges of thoughts and kindnesses. I hope all is well with you and am keeping you in my heart._

**Red Molly, **_for intense conversations about writing and a reassurance that "moments" are what makes a beautiful story and a beautiful relationship (between characters, yes, but also between characters and readers, or readers and authors). Her writing is beautiful, and her words of praise are an honor to receive. _

**ROGUEFURY…**_oh my, old friend. :) How very dear you are to me. Thank you so much for being such a kind, faithful companion in all these little adventures, and for encouraging me constantly, and for—in this case—inspiring the entire backstory of Gabriel and his two brothers, his split from Michael, and his reasons for veering into a lifetime of strict obedience and killing his own heart. I credit it all to you, my friend._

**Tracey 137, **_for reviewing nearly every single chapter and offering very personal, intimate commentary. I think you were the first person to say that this story lifted your heart, and it was such a beautiful and comforting thing to hear—so much so that it lifted my heart as well. It is good to know that this story has done everything I intended, and more._

**ToxicRainfall, **_for also reviewing almost every single chapter of this story, for always offering specific examples of what pulled your heartstrings, for leaving beautifully detailed and inspiring comments, and for becoming a friend with whom I can exchange personal, non-fanfiction-related thoughts (and a love for Kevin Durand). Also, for considering Bethany a "true heroine"—you are a true heroine too, dearheart._

**Twolf2208, **_for sharing your own scars. I am so glad you stumbled across this story and hope you continued to enjoy it._

**Virginia Wolfe, **_for an incredibly thoughtful and heartfelt review. Wow. Reading your comments just lightened my heart and reassured me that I was accomplishing what I hoped to with this piece. Sometimes it's difficult because I write so much of it before I ever begin posting, and so by the time I am "wrapping up," I've read every chapter five-thousand times and am no longer sure if it communicates what I hope it does. Your review tells me I have accomplished my goals, and I deeply appreciate it—not to mention how kind and encouraging it is. Thank you so much._

**Wolf Huntress,**_ thank you for your near-constant encouragers and kindnesses._

**The Wicked That Mourns Just, **_for good wishes during Holy Wee,, and for appreciating the poignancy that comes with brevity. :)_


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